Day 23: Takaka

Takaka is a little town of 1,500 people nestled into a valley between the Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks.  It has a neat little shopping strip, with a couple pubs, a bunch of artist studios, a bike shop, a hardware store, and other little odds and ends places you'd expect from an almost on the beach town.

It also has a tiny little shop that is selling hand painted cards that Sarah makes.

Which makes us happy.

We didn't really have plans for the day, so we took in town a bit, and checked out the grocery store.  You gotta eat sometime, after all.

Remember how beer is really expensive? Well, it turns out there's a way around that.  Even the grocery stores sell brew-your-own supplies.  One can of malt extract with hop extract in it, and a 5 kilo bag of dextrose, and viola!  You can make your own beer.

You can also buy flavor bottles, so rather than spend lots and lots of money on nice booze, you can just buy a bottle of vodka and pour one of these babies in.  Instant gin/whiskey/rum/what have you.

There is a distillery in town as well.  I will have to check it out sometime.

The Kiwiana Hostel has a pile of...well...mostly functional bikes, so we borrowed a few and went to "The Grove".  It's a cool little nature preserve, with lots of funky trees, and limestone formations known as Karst.

Which Molly likes to climb.

This crevice is a great example of Karst formations.

A small crack in a limestone layer is slowly eaten away by rain (slightly acidic), and eventually forms massive crevices.

Sometimes that lead to impressive views.  Those mountains shrouded in clouds are part of the Kahurangi National Park.

A nifty little platform jutting out from the limestone, about 30 feet up from a sheep pasture below.

Part of the platform.

We have heard that there is a lot of good rock climbing around here.  From looking at these rocks, and I can see why.  Lots of little groves, and the rock is solid and not crumbly at all.

Some massive roots growing down from the top of the rocks into the crevice.

Hi Sarah!  The eating away of the limestone happens in all sorts of funny angles, so you are always seeing interesting formations.

We then rode to Pohara Beach, down the road a little further.

This is high tide.  When the tide goes out all the way, the beach is probably half a mile of sand and tide pools before you get to the water.

A self service, 24-7, raw milk dispenser.  The machine on the left will sell you a clean glass bottle, the machine on the right dispenses milk.  This is about halfway between Pohara and Takaka, and one of a handful around the South Island.  It's about $10 NZ for 4 liters of milk, so roughly $5.50 for a gallon.  Not bad, and the milk is delicious.

It's still getting cold at night, and is pretty windy, which we are told is strange for the area.  People blame that on El Nino for now, and we'll see how long it continues.  It is only early Spring here, so with any luck it'll get warmer the longer we're here.  Christmas is the beginning of Summer for Kiwis, and this area gets crowded quickly with vacationers.  For now, we are borrowing a comforter to use in our tent, over our sleeping bags.