Bencarri Nature Park and Rawhiti Cave

09/03/09

Brilliant day today, marred only by my persistent OCD madness this morning when Ric went the 'wrong' way around a tap in the campsite and I couldn't get the thought out of my head. God - I need to get on top of my obsessions. At least we can laugh about it, most of the time.

No rain for a week now so we've enjoyed lots of sun and gentle breezes. We're getting up and hitting the road a bit bit earlier too now which means we get more done.

The seemingly endless winding roads in this region do make me feel rather car sick. I can't read many magazines on the road...even looking at the map is a bad idea sometimes.

First we stopped by at the fantastic Bencarri Nature Park (and cafe) which is on the road north to Takaki. The lady running it had all sorts: dogs, cats, donkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, pigs, goats, rams with huge spiralled horns, sheep, cows, a massive Texan Long horn cow, a Highland calf, two vicious emus, llamas, a moody white Shetland pony, guinea pigs, rabbits (some of which were for sale for $25) and some tame eels in the river next door which we fed mince meat to! We were like two excited children and could have spent all day there stroking and feeding the animals, some of which followed us right round the park in the hope of being fed. The emus were nasty little creatures though.

One of the resident cats, Pumpkin, even came to feed the eels with us and seemed totally fearless around them as they writhed about, sliding in and out of the water with their jaws wide open. Ric later told the lady about his virtual eels and she seems rather keen to have a look: http://www.bedroomlab.com/games/eel/

Determined to find more caves in which to make use of our new head torch we then spent over two hours driving around the Abel Tasman region desperately trying to find the badly signposted Rawhiti Cave. When we finally got there, we hopped out of the van armed only with our cameras and torches and set off towards what we thought was its entrance. It was not.

After a long walk across a couple fields, along a dried up river and half an hour of hiking up a very steep, knobbly, winding and narrow forest path we reached it and although we were sweating and dying of thirst, it was well worth it. We just stood there for a few minutes catching our breath and taking in its magnificence. No photograph we took could do it justice as it was so vast and so full of long, intricately detailed stalactites, textured rock and other strange forms of flora. I made a crappy video to try to capture it a bit better...

Here's some info about the cave.

I have observed, during many hours of driving the wrong way down rural side roads (sometimes twice), that the residents of this area often have really ornate, characterful and/or unusual mailboxes- statement boxes if you like. Some depict the family name, others the name of the house, others are brightly coloured, shaped like giraffes and birds or covered with jade stones, If I wasn't map reading or trying to work out where on earth we were half the time, I would have taken some pictures. I appreciate this quirkiness and sense of humour.

We're finally catching the ferry from Picton to Wellington tomorrow. North Island here we come!