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Published: March 21st 2010
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Bad girl! (she fell, honest) You wouldn’t think you could get lost on a thin straight beach but we can!!
Well I was right about the weather not being that great, the drive up to Golden Bay was a really nice one but you could see the storm clouds brewing. We drove so high up over the mountain range that our ears popped, and then back down the other side (obviously I guess as otherwise we’d be in the clouds writing this). We drove round tight hair pin bends, the likes that reminded me of holidays to Spain where the coach tours driven by Manuel (si si I drive de bus) come very close to the edge making mum scream. This made the drive quite a long one, and although it was only 7pm we still hadn’t sorted anywhere to stay. As usual I tired to get us to a DOC site only to realise that the cheap price was not so once you added petrol to drive out to it (it also only had cold showers - going without a shower I don’t mind but cold ones when your not in Fiji temperatures… I don’t think so!) so in the end we drove all
the way north to Collingwood, as it made more petrol sense than driving half way up the other half the next day only to double back on ourselves a day later…..if you know what I mean.
Anyway, we arrived in Collingwood, a tiny place with only 4 or 5 shops, all closed obviously with a camp site at the end. Luckily they had loads of room (as has everywhere we’ve come to in Elton - think the camping season really is coming to an end). We settled in for the night with our great dinner of sausages salad and rice (I think we are eating far healthier than we thought we would, looking back at the meals we have had) and of course some alcohol and pretty much went to bed. Next morning it was the usual breakfast, wash, wash up and out with a few moments taken to stroke the local cat who invited himself in, we called him Neil (well Nath named him Neil coz he was a ginger New Zealand cat - sorry Neil). We had decided to drive as far north as possible to Fare well Spit but not go on one of the organised
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Huge steak as big as Nath's head eco tour that wanted $120 each!! Hey it’s a big bit of sand with some birds on it, how hard can that be to miss. So we drove all the way to the visitor’s car park and decided to do some of the walks, one of which allowed you to walk the perimeter of the beginning of the spit (the only bit you were allowed to walk on as the rest is a protected nature reserve). So we headed out in the cloudy weather to Fossil Point first off as this was only a 25 min walk.
Well yes it is 25 mins if you go there say “oh look we’re here” and then turn back!! But we wanted to walk the loop which went past fossil point a long the spit a little way and then back to the start point. So off we walked there through some farmers fields with the sheep eyeballing us, and got to the large expanse of whitegrey sand which itself was already littered with little birds, who were also eyeballing us and screeching “warning the humans are coming and they are not listening to our threatening squawks of fear!!!”. Anyway we walked
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...and he ate it all!! along to its end one way and then decided that as the weather was holding and we could see the end of the spit that we were allowed to walk to, that we would head that way. Three hours later we got back to the car! The scenic walk along the beach had turned into an arduous journey through sand dunes that didn’t seem to end.
Now just a little side note here - Nath had always been referred to as Matlock throughout uni as he was by a couple of years only, the old man of the bunch. I would however now like to put forward the nickname of “princess” based on the princess and the pea (don’t know if that particular princess had a name - anyone?). This is because of his inability to walk more than a few steps without complaining that he has a stone in his shoe. Firstly I’m amazed the stones get in his shoes so quickly and secondly the size of the “stone” is normally no more than a speck of dust that I could easily ignore (Nath - in my defence, Mandy on the other hand can wear her socks inside
out and upside down (yes upside down) or have stones the size of ostrich eggs in her shoes and not be bothered by it!! Now maybe this is because Mandy has little “trotters” for feet that are designed for walking on uneven hill sides or that where there’s no sense there’s no feeling!! But I find stones in my shoes very irritating). I should have noticed this before as he can never sit down for a long time if his hankie is in his back pocket (I can easily sit on my mobile all day without even noticing but Nath recons this is because my arse is so big it envelopes everything - so that’s where the remote ends up!)
anyway back to the long journey - it had taken this long because one, we had decided to walk to the end which after an hour was seeming too far, and two, because of this we decided to take a short cut across the dunes - big mistake. The rain had set in at this point and the dunes were getting harder to climb. We had gone with the theory that if we followed previous foot prints then
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Beautiful sunset over Collingwood we were bound to find our way back. If we’d had known that there was a skeleton of a man at the end holding a note saying “I wish I hadn’t cut across the dunes” then we wouldn’t have bothered. No not really it was just a skeleton of a seal and his note was illegible, after all they have no thumbs!!
Even though we were tired after some much needed lunch in Elton we decided to head to Puponga which is in the very North West corner, after a recommendation by a girl at the Nelson camp site. She had said it was the most amazing beach she had ever been to, and on arriving I thought she was mad. It was another very wide white/grey beach, with very few people on it and nothing that I cold see at first that was that spectacular. However we then spent another 2 hours on this beach after finding a number of caves to investigate and some seal pups frolicking with their mother in the ocean waves. After another 3 hours walking around on another beach the sun finally came out just as we decided to leave (typical really) but
being hungry by now (we always seem to be hungry and without scales I hope we aren’t gaining too much weight) we headed back towards Takaka to find a freedom camp spot we had seen the day before . . . . .
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