Kaihoka Lakes

Our destination this morning was the most westerly part of the northern South Island. Or the most northerly part of the West Coast! An initially sealed road heads inland from Golden Bay, crosses a narrow part of the Kahurangi National Park, and emerges at the Whanganui Inlet. After that it’s all unsealed.
We turned right and, as is usual for us, the road got narrower and windier and rougher, and there was nowhere to turn around! Charlie was driving today, and the tension mounted as the road conditions worsened. After about 6km we eventually found ourselves at the Kaihoka Lakes scenic reserve, where we found there is a parking spot (big enough for 2 cars only) down a narrow, steep, soft and pot-holed track – totally unsuitable for a motorhome! We managed to creep up onto a grassy bank, and decided to worry about how to get out of there after we had finished our forest walk and had our coffee!
The walking track took us between two small lakes in the undulating landscape here that have been formed by sand dunes blocking valleys in the underlying sandstone, and in typical West Coast style the bush grows right down to the water’s edge. Very pretty!
Our next challenge was how to get out of there. Charlie had already walked on up the road a bit to see if there was anywhere to turn, but nothing obvious was in sight. We gingerly reversed back down the grassy bank and headed on up the road in search of a space that was big enough for a 7m vehicle to do a U-turn. By this time the track was so narrow that grass was growing in the middle of it! About 2km further on we came to a stretch of grass where it appears stock trucks had recently loaded up with cattle – there were numerous very large (and very fresh!) cow-pats all over the grass, and as I leapt out to help guide Charlie backwards I had to be VERY careful where I trod!
But we managed to turn around, and then we were able to get back out to the intersection at the start of the inlet. We again turned right, and carried on round hoping to get to a point where we could see between the heads and out to the open sea, but there were too many spurs of land in between for this to happen. After another 9 or 10 km of bone-rattling (and having met half a dozen speeding drivers heading towards us in clouds of dust) we decided we’d had enough! We got as far as the Wairoa River, then turned around and headed back. All up, about 35km of shingle road, and the motorhome is looking VERY tired and dusty.
On the way back to our POP at Pakawau, we poked our noses into a beach track just up the road, from where we were JUST able to make out the sand dunes of Farewell Spit arcing away out into the ocean. That’s tomorrow’s adventure!Leggi altro