That finger extending from the top of the bay is a 20+ km sand bar called Farewell Spit. We spent our first morning hiking around on it (though they won't let you hike very far out on it because there are protected bird species that live there). It was a beautiful beach, however. Some parts of it had amazing sand dunes with the sort of delicate waving patterns I imagine on the dunes of a middle-eastern desert. Sadly, I left my camera at home, but here are some other people's photos that are basically exactly what we saw (though neither of them gets the good sand dunes, I'm sorry to say):
On the drive back to Takaka, we also saw hundreds of black swans on the water.
Takaka is also home to the Te Waikoropupu Springs (known locally as the Pupu Springs). The water in the springs has a horizontal visibility that averages 63 meters, making it the clearest body of fresh water in the world. According to New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research (via Wikipedia), this approaches the theoretical maximum for optically pure water. Here it is!
While the water was certainly clear, you will see in our next post that the Pupu springs are by no means alone for having astonishingly clear water. Pretty much every body of water we have encountered since has shocked us with its clarity.
On day 2, we went on a short hike that took us to some caves whose name escapes me right now. The mouth of the cave had a huge number of stalagtights. There was a sort-of roped-off path into the cave itself, but it was really just two red lines stretched back and forth down into the depths. The main concern of whoever made it seemed to be to prevent people from disrupting the cave's ecology--not to give people an easy-to-traverse route in. It was quite slippery and steep at times, and both Jen and I were happy we had some good rock-climbing moves in our arsenal to help us.
The hostel we stayed at was another YHA, but this one is an affiliate--meaning it's a converted private residence. It was a very nice place, however, and full of interesting people. We met a guy who has decided to end his career as a commercial diver for something else, yet-to-be-determined. He was born in Zimbabwe, but has been living in Scotland. The hostel owner speaks Afrikaans, which greatly amused a Dutch girl staying there (since Afrikaans sounds roughly like a small child speaking Dutch to a native Dutch speaker). There were also two friendly, though somewhat over-the-top (for our taste) hippie couples. Actually, we only thought their costumes were over-the-top. One of them sang a very nice rendition of "Don't Worry; Be Happy" with his guitar, which had me whistling the tune all day.
From Takaka, we drove south to camp at Lewis Pass....
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