Week 7 - 6th Nov

Takaka Museum, Rawhiti Cave, Wharariki Beach - again
Friday Nov 6th, 2009

Today we stopped into the Takaka Museum. Here we read about Takaka’s rural backcountry and waterfront history. While in the museum, Alan notices a picture of a beautiful cave. After quizzing the clerk, we find instructions on how to get to the Rawhiki cave. We are going to make this our afternoon challenge.
At the Rawhiti cave, we easily find the farm yard where the trek starts and park the car. The trek sign indicates that the cave is 2.2 km’s in and will take 60 minutes to climb, so off we go.

The first part traverses a dried up creek bed into a mountain valley, then we reach the end and the sign points up. Up we go, and go, and go. We stop numerous times as the trail is very steep and the afternoon is hot. It takes us about 45 minutes to reach the summit of the trail and what we see is unbelievable.

There in the side of the hill is this cavernous opening like a great jaw waiting for food to enter. The opening is all covered in stalactites and they run down the opening as far as we can see inside. The bottom is very dark.

At the entrance of the cave there is a bee colony buzzing around, so we quickly skirt the trail and find another way inside. Alan and I climbed a little way down into the cave, but it was quite slippery as there is a constant drip of water from the stalactites. I stop and take pictures while Alan goes further down. He has to stop as it is getting too dark and much more slippery. While he had his flashlight with him, he felt proper gear was needed to go down further. We couldn’t see how deep it went. What an amazing cave. We were the only people there. We had our lunch at the opening before returning to the car. The return trip was much easier. At the bottom, I realized I had dropped my sunglasses…I decided it was not worth climbing all the way back for them…we went on.

To finish out the day, we race back up the coast (45 min drive) to Wharariki Beach to catch low tide. At Wharariki Beach we attempted our third visit. The first rained out, the second we had not kept the tide times in mind and now this one that gave us two hours before low tide. We hiked over the green sheep covered hills, through a kanuka forest and across the sand dunes to reach this magnificent beach.

We are successful and this time we take the beach trail to the beach. The trail starts the same, but quickly leaves the rolling hills and arrives at the north end of the beach. Our last trip we entered via the sound end. This end is composed of rolling white sand dunes and we walk for a long way through the dunes.
Alan eats the last cookie from Yummie Pleasures in Newcastle. The cookie was still delicious even after all this time!

In front of us are huge rock pillars jutting out of the sea. We take numerous pictures and walk up the beach toward the south end seen yesterday. It is still a gale force wind and the sea is boiling but the scene is so unbelievable that we lap it up.

We wander the beach for two hours walking in and out of the caves created by the sea. The rock cliffs are made of conglomerate and look like someone poured concrete a thousand years ago and the sea has been washing over them ever since. The beach is flat like glass and every now and then you find these filled crystal clear pools reflecting the sun and sand movement around the rocks.

Finally, on the beach we find a seal sunning himself on a rock and since the tide is going out we see the mile of flat, very flat white sand.

We don’t want to leave, but the tide turns at 19:30 and it is nearly that now so we wander back up to the North beach entrance where we came in. Along the way we take pictures of the amazing blown sand art. Nature is so creative when left to fend on its own accord. We have had a beautiful day and what beautiful sights we have seen today!