Sleeping very hard we tried to get up early since checkout is 10am. However, we snoozed for a bit longer than we should have. Running like mad to the kitchen to cook our breakfast as well as some more stuff to store for some future meals, we were hoping the whitebait would not be discussing. To be on the safe side we fried some up alone before our meal to make sure it would not ruin our eggs (eggs are sort of a treat for us, we usually have granola with yogurt for breakfast.) The whitebait was great, it did not taste fishy at all so we added it to our eggs. While doing this we struck up conversation with an English couple who have lived in Queenstown for a year working and are traveling for 3 months then on to Melborne, Australia to work some more. Anyway a side from them having a safari jeep that had a tent on the roof (seriously) they said we needed lemon to go with our whitebait and eggs, we did not have one so they gave us one! They were right the lemon really added to the flavor!
As we were packing our van at 9:55am we saw a van approach…It was our camp host checking to make sure people left on time, she is very punctual! Paul and I threw the rest of our stuff in and got out of dodge before we were charged another night! A very short drive to the car park by the DOC office (like 2 minutes) we asked the DOC lady what we could do for the day aside from visiting Pancake rocks. She rated 3 hikes for us, we heard the british couple were going up Fox River to a big rock over hang called 'The Ballroom'. This sounded cool, but the DOC lady said it had a few high river crossings, and is not marked very well and while a nice hike she recommended Punakaiki River valley walk because it had the best scenery. This walk had "just an extra punch", as she put it. We could tell by her enthusiasm that this was a must do. We packed our day packs and a lunch, left our car in the safe car park and headed down the road to the walk, but first a short stop at the Punakaiki Cavern (literally on the side of the road.)
We took a few stairs down from the road to the cave entrance. Already it felt like were were far removed from civilization. Inside the cave was amazing, cold, dust/water particles in the air and darkness. The trail is not very far in only about 350 feet, but we spent about 15-30min exploring all of its nooks and crevices. The DOC lady said that there are a small number of glow worms there, however not as impressive as the places you can see thousands but they live all over the south island in caves or on logs really anyplace that has an over hang where they can dangle there glowing silk to catch bugs. In the very back of the cavern through a narrow passage way looking up to the right we saw our first glow worms!!! While not many maybe 10-15 it looked like blue twinkle stars in the night sky. We tried to get pictures and video, but it was to dark and we did not have the camera lens to do it. We exchanged a few high fives and felt pretty cool. Onward to our hike!
We immediately saw why our lady from DOC rated this as her favorite hike, it was just stunning. This is the longest Paul and I have ever stayed on a trail, around every corner we stopped and were amazed by the view. Thick jungle cover the steep mountains and faces of granite popped out seeming to glow in the sunshine. The river had a few locals close to the mouth fishing for whitebait, we chatted with one for a moment and he asked where we were from. He had been to Oregon in the 70's and love it, he said being from Oregon we will do just fine in NZ, he is an old hippie who started to tell us about the old bumper stickers he had read while there, things like "Don't Californicate Oregon", he was so thrilled about them! We left him to this whitebait! Past the 3 guys fishing the river was crystal clear, when the sun hit the shallow parts it had no color just the river bed, in the deeper parts that had some shadows the water was beautiful green blue and still very clear! This is one of the prettiest places both of us had ever been to! Feeling special we stopped on a river stone bed and had our lunch, our view was beautiful granite faces and great views continuing up and down the river valley.
Back on the trail Paul thought he saw some old steps leading to a tail, being careful (because there are chasms and caves covered in jungle) the went up a few before the disappeared. Meanwhile I hear something coming up behind me in the bushes, naturally I panic and tell Paul to get down here and help me fend off whatever it is. It turned our to be a Weka! These birds are really goofy, they are bigger than a chicken, have no wings, big thick bird feet with impressive talons, a medium thick beak! I enjoyed watching these birds from a distance, but when this guy was coming up on me like a freight train I was nervous. Paul squatted down and pretended to give him bread the Weka walked right up to him but when he did not see any food, he went about his business. Crazy Weka!
Since we parked right across the street from the Pancake rocks we decided to walk through again and see if we could get some better pics. We did and it was impressive to see them once again, but we did not see the blow holes, the tide was to low. We went back to our car and decided to stay at the motor camp one more night and shower up. After dinner it was time for some blog catch up and prep for our night mission later on. Once we had a healthy start on the blog and the headlamp batteries replaced to shine extra bright we headed out, Ninja Style! We walked back up the road to the caves and headed in to explore. It was pitch black outside with the clouds in thick there was no moon or stars and it was even darker in the cave, very spooky! Once we were into the "ballroom" part of the cave with the high ceilings we turned off our headlamps and looked up, it was amazing. The ceiling of the cave had these little lit up glow worms and in this one main crease running over our heads there were hundreds of them, it looked like we were looking at constellations in the night sky. We both just sat there speechless for a couple minutes, it seemed surreal! Then voices "shabree's explaining how her imagination was getting the best of her" came out and it was back out of the cave with a quickness. It turns out Kasey forever ruined Shabree for nighttime spelunking by giving a dramatic explanation of a cave horror movie she had recently seen.
Tomorrow we head south to Greymouth the biggest town on the west coast, have a look around, and either continue south toward the glaciers or cut inland through Lewis pass into Hamner Springs!
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