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Published: January 29th 2011
Wednesday 26th – Saturday 29th January 2011 Oparara Basin Karamea Bluff may be lower than the Lewis Pass but at least there is a sign at the top telling you how high it is! We passed over the bluff not long after leaving the Gentle Annie camp ground on our way north to the end of the road. The road peaked at 420m before winding back down to sea level.
Karamea describes itself as 'off the beaten track' and 'a natural wonderland', a secluded haven between the mountains and the sea. Tucked into the north west corner of the South Island, the settlement sits on the river flats of the Karamea River. The drive there from Westport is pretty neat, in many places along the road there is the ocean on one side of the road and towering, rainforest clad cliffs on the other. Where there is more land, its still not very wide at all.
We didn't spend a lot of time in Karamea unfortunately, just long enough to get the supplies and info we needed, and meet some very friendly and helpful locals. We were headed for the end of the road, via the Oparara
Oparara Arch
trees growing at all anglesBasin.
The Oparara Basin is tucked away in the Kahurangi National Park. It's a “unique combination of natural landforms, diverse ecosystems and spectacular caves and arches born of a million years of undisturbed isolation” say the Oparara Valley Project Trust, and we'd have to agree. Much of the area was logged back in the days when men were made of steel and boats were made of wood. The loggers would have needed to be pretty tough to work there, beautiful setting that it is, and to get the logs out. Now the limestone formations and rainforest are protected under the conservation act. Only some of the caves and arches are openly accessible to the general public, some you must take a guided tour to see, and some you need all the right reasons, permits, skills and qualifications to visit.
The Basin is formed by 400 million year old granite and softer, much more recent limestones. Earths natural forces have wrinkled, carved, and eroded the limestone and granite into the canyons, caves and arches we visited. The caves are full of stalactites and stalagmites, dripstone and flowstone formations, fossils, glowworms, spiders, spiders and troglobites. And plenty more that ordinary
Oparara Arch
the end we walked in - you can just see Colin and Samara in the corner folk like us don't know about.
The road access to the Oparara Basin is worse than the Molesworth Road! Sure, its a far shorter road, only 16km of metal (gravel) track, but the corrugations were far worse, rutted or pot holed is a better description. The road is narrow and winds up and down and round and round, the forest closing in on both sides. I'm glad we didn't meet any big motor homes (the sign at the start of the road does say they arent allowed, but we saw one up there.)
The main feature of the open access area is the Oparara Arch, one of Australasias largest natural land bridges. I cant remember all the stats for it, just that it is about 43m high and 219m long. It was a nice walk along the river to the arch, Samara was strapped to Colins front and was fast asleep. The arch was really impressive, neck achingly so! There were trees and bushes growing out of the sides, hanging sideways holding on tight. Hopefully the photos will do it justice, but as it was such a beautiful day (more about the weather later) the contrast between the
darkness inside the arch and the bright sunshine outside was just too much The Oparara Arch was worth the drive into the basin just on its own. But while we were there we went to see some of the other rock attractions.
I went on the Honeycomb Hill Cave tour the following morning. A tour is the only way to see this cave system (71km of caves covering an area of 1000m by 800m, don't know how deep they go, we weren't told and I am writing this without the benefit of google) as they are so protected, and the tour company is the local community trust working in conjunction with DOC. As we couldn't take Samara on the tour, I went in the morning and Colin would go in the afternoon if enough other people turned up. As it turned out, there were more people for an afternoon tour, but he decided not to go!
We walked through regenerating forest for about 20 minutes before turning off into untouched forest for another 20 minutes. There used to be a bridge across the river until the floods of 28th Dec '10 took it out. We saw all the
Oparara Arch
the other end flooding on the news at home, but mainly it was from the Nelson - Blenheim area. Here we could see some huge trees that had come down the river and there was silt and debris a long way from the river banks. So instead of the bridge, which doesn't sound like will be rebuilt for a while, there was a rope and a dinghy. We had carried life jackets up from the car park for this crossing. The river was all of 20m wide but about 5m deep. We were pulled across two at a time, having to scramble up and down the banks at either side, to the amusement of all on the tour.
The caves, or parts of caves, we saw were pretty neat. Access was easy, though rough underfoot at times. We went in and out different places but did a little backtracking while inside. We all had helmets with headlamps on, but the guide also had a better light to point out the highlights of the caverns. We didn't see as many fossils and bones as I was expecting. We saw some from a bush moa, giant moa, kiwi, red deer and giant land snails.
Moa skull
Honeycomb Hill Cave None were 'in situ' but had been placed on display in little walled off areas. Apparently most of the fossilised remains have been carted off to museums so we'll check in Te Papa next time we go through Wellington. The route took us past a lot of different limestone formations, the usual stalactites and stalagmites, some that had a 'cauliflower effect' as described by the guide, some that were windblown (ie growing on a slant), some described as elephants feet, some that I understood to be flowstone. We passed other caves leading off ours and some sink-holes letting light in, a small stream and some hanging tree roots. It was all pretty impressive, and as often happens, the tour was far too short. Before we knew it we were heading outside again to collect our bags and head back.
Back at the car park we had a quick lunch then took ourselves off to see the rest of the easily accessible sights. We went to 'Crazy Paving Cave' where the floor looked like crazy paved mud, and 'Box Cavern', a big cave next door. We saw a cave spider and lots of egg sacs hanging from the cave overhangs.
"Elephants Feet" formations
At least thats what the guide called them (Honeycomb Hill Cave) We walked the 1h 30 round the Moria Gate Arch walk (many places here have been named after Lord of The Rings places as they thought the scenery was very Middle Earth like, and this was before the movies came out). I didn't go in the Moria Gate Arch as I was carrying Samara and the access wasn't very easy, but you could see it from further round. The Galadrials Mirror Tarn wasn't very mirror like, the gentle breeze rippling the surface.
We stopped the night at the end of the road, at the DOC site at the start or finish (depending on which way you walk) of the Heaphy track. This was the worst camp for sand-flies we have found so far, beaten in viciousness only by the first ones we found on the Lewis Pass. The site itself was great, the scenery stunning, a long sandy beach backed by forest clad mountains, a wide river snaking its way to the sea.
Punakaiki Pancakes We drove back along the coast past Westport and on towards Greymouth The run of unusually good west coast weather looked as if it was coming to an end. The coast is
famous / infamous / notorious for rain, and we have had day after day of sunshine. The clouds slowly built up over the day, lending some dramatic black backdrops to the stunning coastal scenery. Our target for the day was to see the pancake rocks and blowholes at Punakaiki. Formed over 30 million years ago from fragments of skeletons and shells, the limestone rocks have been sculpted over thousands and thousands of years by wind, rain and sea water into the layers that did kind of look like stacks of pancakes. Or layers or stacks of anything thin. Looked good, whatever you want to compare them to. We didn't see much in the way of blowholes, or water coming through blowholes, but the first time we were there the tide was all wrong. They say optimal conditions are high tide and a strong swell, SW winds help too.
The rain started as we were walking round the track (almost all buggy friendly) and continued on and off all night. We were told at the DOC visitors centre that as long as we were more than 1km from the campground at Punakaiki and didn't stop somewhere with a no camping
sign, as we are self-contained we could free camp almost anywhere along the coast. So we took ourselves about 1500m from the rocks to a beach access track and parked on the land side of some flax, trying to give ourselves some protection from the wind. Before we knew it, a big hire van turned up and parked behind us, followed a little later by another small van and a bus. What started as a nice little place to stop had quickly turned very busy, and the flax provided no protection from the wind or rain.
We went back to the rocks in the morning just after high tide (the rain had eased to showers) but even with strong south-westerlies the blowhole wasn't blowing.
Now we are in Greymouth, camping out the back of the Neptune Backpackers, enjoying the sun between showers and being thankful that we arent at home where Cyclone Wilma is hitting hard. We hope to head up to Lake Brunner tomorrow then further down the West Coast to the glaciers.
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