Jan 28: Caving

aliceesor

Jan 28, 2024: Curio Bay -> Manapouri

We packed up and went to explore Curio Bay, which was all but invisible to us from the wind protected campsite. Curio Bay is home to some really old trees. Like Jurrasic era old. On the now beach, there are fallen logs and stumps of a forest that was flooded and then petrified.

Tree trunk that was trapped in the wet sediment without oxygen and with a lot of mineral content, which eventually replaced the wood’s cell wall structures.
Looked like mud from above, but it’s all solid rock.
The tide pools here are home to a bubble bladder seaweed just as stompable as their BC coast cousin.

We then backtracked a bit to Cathedral Caves, which can only be visited at low tide. The base rock is ignimbrite, “a white, massive rock formed from pumice and ash that was erupted about 8 million years ago”. It erodes easily – in this location into a tunnel with a U-bend (or a cave with two entrances).

At the back of the cave, there was a pile of human skulls! Ok. Actually just rocks.
Longshanks of the cave
Shortshanks of the cave
This coast is apparently a place where both (rare) yellow-eyed and (tiny!) blue penguins make their nests. We didn’t see any nests or penguins, though.
The beach was inspirational for artistic talent, and other visitors may have marveled at the interpretive dance, but fortunately they’re unlikely to have heard the singing as the breeze blew our belting voices away.

I’ve been hearing that Kiwis are really laid back folk, and often go barefoot or just in “jandles”, so I went back up the forest track carrying my shoes and socks.

I’m still working on the laid back part though, so I did lunges up the hill while mum and F looked at the awesome tree ferns and other novel plants.

We stopped for lunch at a tasty seafood eatery in Invercargill which was an homage to a spy, Buster Crabb, who lived and died (or did he?!? evidence is inconclusive!) mysteriously on the other side of the world from the restaurant. We did readings of the newspaper-like menu (brilliant accents included) and also ate some of the “land maggots” in taco format.

We passed a roadside sign “Recruiting Boners”. We’re guessing it might have to do with the land maggots, but perhaps they’re short trombone players this far south…

Gemstone beach was our last coastal stop before heading north. It seemed popular with detectorists (metal detector wielding folk).

We picked up some “gems” of our own.
Oddly, built into this windswept knob is a house-ish structure. (Pirate gemstone hideaway?)

It started to rain again in earnest and the campsite we’d been aiming for turned out to be just a gravel pullout. We caved and finished the drive to Manapouri and booked into a cheap (historic?) motel.

Having a hot bath or shower while it dumped rain outside = zero regrets whatsoever about sleeping indoors. The motel room had a lake view, but didn’t have a kitchenette, so we improvised our own with the camp stove on the balcony table under the eves.

We played my best game of Yahtzee ever, and sorted our “gemstones” before luxuriating in real beds.

Alice (with input and photos from Felicity and Colleen)

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