River walking in Punakaiki
09.04.2010
We organised to leave our bags at the hostel whilst we embarked on a 2 day hike around the area. The path crossed several 'streams', some of which were raging rivers and we gave up with taking our shoes on and off so just left them on and waded along the rivers, sometimes for a kilometre in one go...we were very soggy by the time we arrived at the campsite at the end of the day. The "ballroom overhang" was the designated campsite and as soon as we arrived we could see why, it was a spectacular limestone overhand with space underneath for over 20 tents- we were the only people there so we put up our tent, started a fire in the stone circle and lit our cooker to make dinner. We had put our shoes and socks next to the fire to dry them out but later that evening discovered that they had began to melt with the heat so we rescued them and let them remain damp as we would have to cross the streams again first thing in the morning. It was a lovely peacefu nights sleep with only the drips from the limestone overhead creating a sound on the roof of the tent.
The first river crossing of the day was the worst, soaking wet feet again and just after breakfast! The streams were lower today than yesterday though which was a bit of a bonus. We walked through forest and a beautiful limestone canyon with tall cliffs on either side, through more streams and to a cave which was over 200m long (which Sam went off to explore but came back with no sightings of the ellusive glowworms). We walked on for the afternoon and reached the road back to Punakaiki which we followed back to the village. The views from the road were amazing, blue seas and sandy beaches (but no seals though). When we reached Punakaiki we left our bag in a bush (with a Weka) and walked down to the pub in the village for dinner. When it got dark we walked to a beach which reputedly had nesting penguins and waited on a rock until it was too dark to see anything, we didn't see any penguins. We walked back to our bag and put up the tent in the lay-by before getting into bed, we were slightly freaked out when a car stopped right next to us but it soon pulled off again an we went to sleep.
Posted by SamAmy 05:20 Archived in New Zealand Tagged backpacking
