Pohara to Cape Farewell and Back

Saturday 17th November

Well, on Wednesday, we left the Pohara Boat Club where about 8 other motorhomes had also parked up to travel just down the road to the Takaka Golf Club. It's a 9 hole, flat course along the edge of the peaceful waters of Golden Bay. Gerald, from Dunedin, who is up here visiting his daughter, a local vet, joined us for the whole 18 holes. He doesn't play often so it was a slow round but it rather suited me and I enjoyed the morning. we now have an invitation to park up at his place when we reach Dunedin and perhaps have another game of golf.
After the game Len and I returned to the Boat Club for our $2 showers before heading further north, through Collingwood (huge icecreams!), to a tiny place called Pakawau where we stayed at a POP located on huge lawns in front of The Old School Cafe which is, as described, the little old school which has been turned into a cafe which happened to be closed at the time so we couldn't sample it's wares but it looked really nice.

The interesting thing is that the guy who owns it also owns the camping ground over the road where he could be making a profit from people such as us but instead he allows up to 5 motorhomes to stay for free on his lovely lawn as long as you are a member of the NZMCA. People are so generous and we really appreciate that there are so many fellow members who do this.

Thursday we had a huge day and were pretty exhausted by the end of it. That's why I ordered rain for today so we could bunker down, catch up on the blog, read, play some games etc!
We drove to Wharariki Beach along a fairly narrow, very dusty road (poor Debussy - it has never been so dirty - but the beach is quite different from any others we have seen particularly for the massive white sculptured sand dunes with striations already looking like it is partially turned into sandstone, some steep dunes just crying out for kids to slide down them on some cardboard, pools of water and probably fur seals at low tide. The surrounding kanuka trees were totally bent at the knees by the strong winds that blow through.

We did the Puponga Farm Park walk from our 100 great day walks book and I have to say it was no walk in the park! Especially for those of us who are not very good with heights and precipitous cliffs! However Len enjoyed it.
The walk which took us about 4 hours climbed up rugged farm and coastland from Wharariki Beach to Farewell Heads, the most northern part of the South Island, (and where we saw some fur seals playing) and then on to the Pillar Point lighthouse which looked rather insignificant as far as lighthouses go. But we did have good views out to the North Island and Farewell Spit with everchanging landscape. As we neared the lighthouse we were away from the cliffs it became both alpine and desert like with the lowgrowing plants and sandstone.
There were no signs of anyone else doing this walk but there were a couple of German girls at the Heads, one of them biking her way around NZ.
The end of the walk was the long dusty trek along the metal road back to the bus in the carpark where, by then, about 10 other motorhomes visiting the beach were parked.

It was then back into the bus, a quick drive out towards the spit itself where we decided not to do the tourist thing by joining a supervised tour. Instead we drove back towards Takaka, seeing people working on saving a stranded whale on the way, before walking in the Milnthorp Park. We drove out towards Pupu Springs looking for a DOC camp that was in our book but couldn't find it. As we had ended up at Pupu Springs by then we finished off this exhausting day by yet another walk through the springs - officially known as Te Waikoropupu Springs. They are the largest freshwater springs in NZ and the largest cold water springs in the Southern Hemisphere. It was an easy, nice 30 minute stroll to finish the day off.

As we couldn't find the DOC camp we drove further on up another dusty metal road to the little carpark at the start of the Pupu Hydro Walkway which we weren't even tempted to do until Friday! However we knew we were allowed to park there overnight and there was already a little van there with an ex schoolteacher from Te Puke - we always seem to be meeting up with people from close to home.

After a well earned sleep we did the Pupu Hydro Loop Track which retraced the old goldmining water race which has been re-used for power generation. It was an interesting walk for sure and we even saw a big koura