Cape Farewell & Wharariki Beach

We camped along a river that night. It's the last freedom camping spot before the Northern peninsula, Cape Farewell. It poured that evening so we hid in the van. But as we were eating, a familiar face walked by. Luc! We had met him and Leonie in Wellington and had met again by chance near Blenheim. After having been in one place for 3 weeks while working, it was really surprising to run into them again. But it was nice to catch up. They were waiting for an electronic dance music festival around New Year's. And they had some time to kill, so we decided to do Cape Farewell together the following day.

In the morning we got each other excited about jumping in the river. It was very cold, almost as numbing as Riwaka Resurgence. We swam a quick circle and ran out to dry off, warm up in the sun and eat some breakfast. It was still a long drive to Cape Farewell, so we set off right away.

Cape Farewell has a lighthouse to warn boats sailing in the straight between NZ's North and South islands. The hills are rugged and wind-blown, resembling Scotland. The hills are fenced off for sheep, but a trail cuts across for people to explore the coastline. At the top of a hill was a great view of Farewell Spit. It's a huge sandbank that trails off towards the horizon. This sandback archs towards the mainland and shelters Golden Bay. At low tide, this bay falls dry and many people go out to collect shellfish. Unfortunately, sometimes a pod of hundreds of whales also swim into the Bay and can get caught by a fast falling tide. Whenever this hits the news, many locals rush out to save the beached whales by keeping them wet and trying to get them back into deeper water. But still several hundred die at a time. Not enough is known about them but it could be that the whales' sonar is disrupted, either by the low sand bank or by an offshore drilling rig. Hopefully more research can protect them in the future.

Further in the distance we could even see the islands that include the Queen Charlotte Sound. Interestingly, Mt Taranaki on the North Island is not far off from where we were. But it was just a little too hazy to see it on the horizon.

Just around the corner was another spot we wanted to explore, Wharariki Beach. It is famous for its eroded rocks that stand with their feet in the shallow water. During an extremely low tide, you can walk right out to them. But when we were there the waves were rolling, carving away at their base. As we walked along the beach, an opening became visible in the large rocks, a large tunnel that had washed straight through, similar to Cathedral Cove on the North island. Awesome.

The water was completely covered in little jelly bubbles. And at the center of each bubble was a bright blue dot. It was really strange. There wasn't a clear bit of water to walk in. The "slime" was everywhere. It turns out that they were jellyfish eggs. It was incredible how many there were. We explored more along the beach and found several caves along the beach. A few seals were also hanging out. After a long walk on the beach, we made our way back through the dunes to the van, and eventually the same campsite again.

When we started up the laptop the following day, we were surprised by a familiar image. The large rocks with their eroded cave tunnels was set as our background! And the lock screen had another picture of the same rocks from inside the cave. If you have Windows 10, check it out for yourself.Read more