Aotearoa Landscapes: The Heaphy Track / Karamea Exploration

Amy and I traveled to Karamea over Waitangi weekend to do some caving, a bit of tramping and the Heaphy track. While over on the West Coast, we arranged to meet up with Chris who was down from Nelson.

Christchurch to Karamea

Enroute to Karamea, Amy and I made a number of stops along the way. One of which was the Inangahua River which, due to recent rains, had a decent amount of water in it. Where was my boat now?! Looking at this clean 7m shelf drop, I was wishing I had it.

Inangahua River waterfall

Next stop was Cape Foulwind, coast side of Westport (our last major town on the journey up the West Coast) to have a quick look at the lighthouse and the seal colony.

Already late in the day, we whipped up to the Denniston Plateau to watch an incredible sunset before coming back down to find a camp spot.

The following day, we revisited the Charming Creek walkway, a walk we had done a year or so ago from Ngakawau to Mangatini Falls. Keen to link up the second half, we ventured miles and miles down a windy gravel road to the Seddonville end of the track and began walking. This end of the track was not nearly as exciting as the other and not as highly recommended, though we did see a few natives:

Next stop...

Karamea

Well not actually Karamea as the place is on the small side (popn ~ 400), we ventured north to Oparara to explore the network of limestone features the area had to offer. While the Honeycomb Caves were restricted to tour groups only (DOC protection of a fragile ecosystem where moa bones still lay in-situ) costing upwards of $100pp(!!), we opted instead for the (free) cave network consisting of Crazy Paving and Box Canyon Caves. We spent a few hours in these caves exploring and photographing this seldom-seen environment.

Fat chance in these waters!

The tannin stained Oparara River in the rain

Cave spiders

Spider's eggs

Cave weta

Mirror tarn

Later that day, we walking up the Oparara River to see the Oparara Arch, undoubtedly, the single most impressive natural landscape I've seen in New Zealand - photos struggle to do justice to this massive limestone arch due to its shear size.

Karst landscape, caves everywhere, this one (nestled away in the bush) was about 200m deep - great exploring

Photos cannot do justice to the size of this monstrous feature

Inside the enormous Oparara arch

Eating uranium sticks was a funny idea at the time

Exploring done, we spent our final night with Chris, camping in Kohaihai at, what would eventually be, the end of the track for us. Tomorrow...the Heaphy!

Someone made a serious moostake

The Heaphy

The Heaphy traverses through ancient routes used by early pakeha and maori from Kohaihai to Golden Bay.

The 78km tramp usually takes 3-4 days to walk and a further half day to drive from end to end, the shortest route being the 450km drive down the West Coast, through the Buller Gorge and over the Takaka Hill, about six hours of drive time! Being working class folk, Amy and I opted to splash out and cull the drive, instead flying with Jim of Adventure Flights, Golden Bay.

The flight itself took around 30 minutes and was in a 5 seater Cessna fixed wing plane, cool by any standards! The view wasn't bad either:

The start of the track

Powelliphanta, NZ's carnivorous snail!

It's a hard life in some of New Zealand's finer accommodation

Stunning dense native bush surrounds you for the second day, this section feels unlike any other on the track with lucious green bush all around!

Mushies, all different sorts of them. This explains a little about the Nelson folk I'm sure!

Pesky weka

Not such a stupid competition now...

Hugging huge trees

Dubbed Hotel Heaphy, this behemoth of a hut cost too much and makes tramping far too cozy, still it keeps the sandflies out so no complaints!

Stunning sunset on our final evening

This may go some lengths to explaining why there was a scarcity of native birds throughout the hike, though we did hear kiwi calling all throughout the night here