Sunday was another sunny, warm day and we did the 4 hour return Rakaia Gorge walk in the morning. It is a superb tramp running in and out of bush, kowhai, cabbages trees, the pleasant scent of elderflower, pittosporums and other natives and undulating along and above the azure river - such spectacular views and we took so many photos as it was all so beautiful. There was the odd fisherman seeking his quota of salmon or trout and we could hear intermittent gunshots from Terrace Downs above us where you can go clay pigeon shooting as well as play golf. We were able to look into the entrances of some old coalmines on the way and were overtaken at times by the jet boat taking thrillseekers up the river.
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| Rakaia Gorge(ous) |
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| 19th century Snowdon coalmine entrance |
Today, as Len mentioned in the last blog, we played golf at Terrace Downs resort which is an international standard course with all the confronting bunkers (70) and lakes (11) that go with that as well as large accommodation lodges surrounding parts of the course. It's pretty interesting with snow capped Mount Hutt as a back drop and also very challenging even without the gale force winds that we experienced today. It is known to be windy a lot of the time and it's easy to see why there is a little place down the road called Windwhistle! It was often hard to even stand up let alone keep the ball on the tee so everything considered we were reasonably happy with our games despite my score being the highest I have had for a while. Unlike some others we only lost 3 balls between us!
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| 10th tee to green |
We didn't finish playing until 6.30 so have returned to the nice clean camp at Rakaia Gorge for our 3rd night and will head onto Methven which is about 20km down the road tomorrow.
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