A beautiful start to the day with blue skies and good visibility. After breakfast we headed out to find the northern most part of the South Island, a place called Cape Farewell on Farewell spit. We headed out of Nelson to the South West then turned North West following the coast. Our first planned stop was the airport at Moteuka as I had some crazy idea about hang gliding. I had two options, a micro light which is a small cockpit for two suspended below a hang glider and powered by a small engine, or the pure hang glider which is launched by strapping the hang glider on (with a qualified pilot as well) and leaping off the edge of a cliff. The second seemed much safer as there was no engine to fail!! Anyway, when we got to the airfield it was still rather cool, so I gave the idea a miss, but all things being equal I will be leaping off a cliff before leaving here.
We continued North West and yet again the scenery was stunning, even more so today due to the excellent visibility. We started climbing up the Takaka hill which had numerous scenic lookouts, and the scenery to justify them. One of the look outs was about a 15 minute walk off the road, so at least we got a little exercise.
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Typical View
The hill peaked at around 2500 feet, the drive was full of hairpin turns yet again, I think Lyns hand is frozen to the shape of the grab handle in the car. Once safely down the other side of the hill we stopped in the town of Takaka to look around the local stores. So far we haven’t come across any large store chains with the exception of a couple of food store chains and McDonalds and KFC! All the stores seem to be family owned and hardware stores sell hardware, not food and clothes, what a concept!!
Next stop was some fresh water springs. Again, we got some exercise as it was about a 30 minute boardwalk trip to the springs. These springs pump water up to the surface at the rate of 14,000 litres per/second or 40 bathtubs full/second or 425,000,000 gallons per day! The water is crystal clear, evidently the only purer water in the world lies under the Ross Ice Field in Antarctica.
Clear Spring Water
Next stop was the Farewell Spit, in reality this was a non event as there was nothing to see, as to get to the end of the spit was a 5 hour walk!
On the way back we went a little faster as it was the same route, and we had seen the scenery on the way up, so it was time to enjoy some driving. The local drivers are very polite and many will pull over to let you pass if they are travelling slower on the hills, the same applies to truck drivers; very impressive.