Gorgeous
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Mon 1 Apr 2013 08:41
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The Blog is back, after an enforced absence caused
by us touring South Island for several weeks. A gratifying and
surprising number of people say they have missed it.
Here's the first place we went to in the South -
Sawcut Gorge near Blenheim. It's a two hour walk from the roadhead up
a quite delightful small river to get here, wading across the river about 20
times as it winds its way through its own wider and much deeper
gorge - safe only in dry weather
 For scale you can see Ali standing on the right
hand stream bank at the entrance; it's easy to see why the gorge got its name.
To get here you have to drive 20km into the hills
up a gravel road (NZ has lots & lots of these). There are two tricks to this
(i) drive urprisingly fast - 60kph is usually good. In dry weather the
surface corrugates and sets like concrete. If you go fast the wheels seem to
glide smoothly from crest to crest of the corrugations. If you go slower
you'd think the car was going to rattle and shake itself to bits. In fact it
probably would. Dead slow is OK - but it takes forever. (ii) close all vents. In
dry weather these roads are very dusty. You drive along in a cloud of dust which
gets sucked into the car. So obviously you close all the vents. Then after a
while you discover that fine dust is still getting into the car - you can taste
it but not see it. So you ignore it. Bad mistake. What you forgot to do (it
seems everyone learns the hard way) is to put the cabin air onto 'recirculate',
thus closing off all access to the exterior. Failure to do this places a thin
film of very fine dust absolutely everywhere inside the vehicle. Cue lots of
cleaning of clothes and car. You never get it wrong again!
But back to the gorge. This is the view from the
inside, again with Ali for scale:
 It's a magical place, way off the beaten track,
unsigned and therefore not much visited.
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