We awoke in the middle of nowhere, mist covering the land outside our window. Like all our other west coast mornings, though, it burned off quickly and soon you could see the mountainous vista.
Pic:
Without any mobile phone signal, we found ourselves sitting by the end of the motel room that was presumably closer to the wifi router - in our case, hanging out in the toilet or bathroom with our arms waving in the air, desperate to get a bar or two of wireless. Email checked, we set off along a windy and remarkably high road through the rainforest to the place of Yo’s earliest childhood: Karamea.
After around an hour’s drive through some of the windiest roads we’d yet been on, we arrived. Karamea: Population 575. Also in the middle of nowhere. If Seddonville was in the ass-end of nowhere, Karamea was clearly the anus. There were plenty of buildings, a smattering of shops, and about three people. No phone signal, no free wifi anywhere to be seen, just cows. They were good at cleaning their own nostrils. Slap with the tongue - left one done. Slap again - right one done too. Yum!
We had lunch in the Karamea Hotel. Probably the only hotel, although there were a few other accommodation type places about - but they all must have been empty because there were no people.
It only took a little while for Yo to look at a place that might have been her house - but it was all changed from the house she remembers of 25 years ago, so she couldn’t really be sure. With little else to do, we headed out to the Oparara Basin. Our first attempt at following the local guide leaflet led us directly back into Karamea ten minutes after we set off, but upon our second attempt we managed to find the long windy unpaved road we were looking for. It was approximately 16km of uneven, gravelled, rally-track style road, where, if you wanted your car undamaged at the end, you could really only go 30 km an hour, max, to avoid the hazards.
The track was actually an old logging track that had been maintained ever since and eventually ‘done up’ to allow tourists to walk around and view local caves, limestone arches, wildlife, and just the rainforest in general. We decided to go to Box Canyon Cave and Crazy Paving. Crazy paving was simply a cave with mud that had dried in the crazed-cracked look that sometimes happens when mud becomes really dry, but Box Canyon Cave was pretty awesome. It was probably the biggest natural cave we’d ever been in, with a ceiling towering into the darkness above us, and a width of at least ten meters, which twisted and turned menacingly into the depths of the earth. The walls had accretions of moisture that glowed mysteriously in the wan light of our mobile phones, and the high-flood debris marks on the walls were well above our heads.
Outside, the sign had told us that a particular species of spider made this cave its home, and boy it didn’t disappoint! With a size of around 15 cm, it was easily the biggest spider I’d ever seen outside a cage, and kinda creepy to come across in the darkness.
Video links, pics of spider:
Caves done, we took a walk along the rainforest, and whilst tamer than some rainforest walks we’d been on already, the wildlife was particularly cute.
Video of robin:
As soon as the robin had gone, a curious Weka wandered up, but wasn’t quite interested in getting close enough to try out the cookie crumbs we offered it.
A bit later on, there was a fantail who had a thing or two to tell us, and followed along fanning its tail and generally flitting about:
Video of fantail.
The Moria Arch was the final part of the walk, and whilst it didn’t resemble anything from Lord of The Rings (Perhaps a cash-in?) it was still an impressive natural wonder, the limestone reaching all the way across the trout-bearing river, with caves that allowed us to access it from above.
Arch pics:
Walk done, we headed home via the windy pass, which we learned was called Karamea Bluff, (someone had modified the sign to say karamea puffs, but we were smarter than their tricks)
Pics:
Tea was a pot of cooked pasta at our motel, and then we went to bed.
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