After a run of amazing spring weather that had us all breaking out the shorter sleeves and dipping our feet in the ocean to see just how cold it was we woke to the other side of spring a wet stormy day. It called for a slight adjustment in our plans and a straight trip through to our next destination instead of stopping to do a walk on the way. We were heading up around an hour passed Westport to a campground called the Gentle Annie, several people had recommended it to us and since it was in a good location for the things we wanted to do we were going to give it a go. It was pretty much love at first sight when we arrived, the love only deepened once we picked our parking spot overlooking the river mouth and the beach beyond. For us that is normally enough for a camp to rank fairly highly, great views and close to the beach. But this place also has a wonderful little area that in the summer is a cafe as well. Over winter it serves as the lounge area for campers complete with a fire, well supplied play area for children and unlimited free wifi – words that are guaranteed to bring a smile to Wayne’s face. There’s also a great outside area with a pizza oven and a fire pit that would be a fabulous place to relax with a few drinks over summer, also a pretty great place to toast a few marshmallows on a September evening.
This is a spot where you could have filled your time easily without ever leaving the camp. A beach to roam, great spot to try to catch a fish and even some walking tracks to explore on the property. We did a bit of all these things but there were a few places we really wanted to explore from here. One of them was the Oparara Arches. The arches are past Karamea a tiny little town pretty much as far as the road goes north on the west coast and knowing that the road was a fairly steep windy affair we opted to just take the car and go for the day. Because we are normally staying right at or very close to the places we are visiting that day our mornings don’t normally have to start early. We can take our time, do a bit of school work and sort a few things around the bus before we head out to do something. This day however we made sure we were on our way by just after eight and we were so glad we did after the long drive there. All worth it once we arrived and started our first walk of the day.
We started with the smallest and arguably most interesting walk first, to a series of caves that they call the crazy paving cave and box canyon cave. As the name would suggest the floor in the crazy paving cave is cracked and broken like some kind of randomly arranged paving stones. This cave is not to big and you walk through it and then up a flight of stairs to make your way down in to the box canyon cave. Luckily we had brought our torches because this cave went in quite a way and both the boys wanted to explore every inch of it. Once we managed to tear Oliver away from the caves we walked in to the Oparara Arch the biggest of the limestone arches in this area. It is very hard to catch the scale of this arch in a photo as it is just so huge, towering above you like a giant window in a natural ceiling.
The other arch that you can see here is the Moria Gate arch, it’s smaller but you can actually climb down inside this one to a cave like area, sit inside and look out through both sides of the arch. The fascinating system of caves in this area have taken millions of years to develop and in the quiet, coolness of Moria Gate you get a real feel for that. It feels like a place that has been relatively unchanged by people and I hope it remains that way.
After a day spent in such a fascinating part of the country we got to go back to our home parked right beside a gorgeous beach. It almost felt too much to hope for a great sunset to end our day but perhaps this truly is the best camp ever because we got one anyway.
My Wandering Kiwi Family 