Heading out of town we had to stop by the Police station:
The Oparara Arch is a natural limestone arch nibbled away by the Oparara River.
The Moria Gate Arch is one of several locations that have been renamed after Lord of the Rings places. I don't know what it was before. It doesn't really look much like the true Moria Gate, you know, the one in real life...in the Misty Mountains...
View from the outsideI thought "man what a gyp". I turned around to go back and Cynthia says let's just see what's around the corner. When we went on there was a sign pointing the way to Moria Gate. The trail actually went up and over the gate to the other side.
I told you it looked like Jurassic Park
I told you it looked like Jurassic ParkOn the other side we found the cave opening leading into the bowels of Moria...
When we were flying to Christchurch from Auckland we were seated next to a woman. Cynthia and she talked the whole way down. It was another case of the "It's a small world" syndrome. Turns out she lives in Smithers British Columbia, just up the road (in Canada terms) from our cabin at Nimpo Lake! She had been to Nimpo many times and knew some of our neighbors.
So what does this have to do with arches and caves? Just when we got back to the parking lot who walks out of the woods but the woman from Smithers. Weird.
When we were in Karamea we saw this car drive by (your usual camry type rental car) that had a rack on it that carried a fishing rod from the hood up over the top of the car. It looked kind of slick. Right after we got to the car park for the caves, that same car drives up and parks right next to us. I had to talk to the guy and check out this gizmo. Seems he had come up with this slick 2-piece rack, both pieces had flat plates on the bottom that were magnetic and could be stuck anywhere on the car that was convenient. In this case one on the hood and one on the top. He had two nice rods on it and they are only held to the rack by small bungy cords. I don't know much about spinning rods but he had about $2000 worth of fly rod/reel strapped on. He said he'd been traveling around for 6 weeks and nobody had bothered it yet.
Judging by the accents I'm guessing they were Scandinavian.
They took off up the trail ahead of us while we got our head lamps out. When we got to the cave they were coming back grumbling about needing a "torch", which is flashlight everywhere else in the world but the US. I offered him my spare and we went down together.
It was a little bit of a mistake because he and his friend must have been geologists or something because they would yammer away in their native tongue about every tiny thing they came across, and they kept going farther into the cave. See the problem here is I had given them a $3 flashlight that I bought in the checkout line at Lowe's or someplace so I felt obligated to stick around until they got out safely. I don't know if you've ever been deep in a cave and turned off your light but it is frightening. You put your hand up in front of your face and stare as hard as you can and then you'll end up touching your nose without even realizing your hand was close. Of course the next thing is you start thinking about how screwed you'd be if your light went out. So our cave adventure lasted longer than I had hoped.
After everyone had returned safely from the bowels of the earth we hopped in the car and headed back down the coast bound for Westport again. Our timing had been excellent. We came around a corner and the road people were just working on a "slip" that had us trapped up there and we didn't even know it! They had just gotten half the roadway clear so we were off and running.
When we were flying to Christchurch from Auckland we were seated next to a woman. Cynthia and she talked the whole way down. It was another case of the "It's a small world" syndrome. Turns out she lives in Smithers British Columbia, just up the road (in Canada terms) from our cabin at Nimpo Lake! She had been to Nimpo many times and knew some of our neighbors.
So what does this have to do with arches and caves? Just when we got back to the parking lot who walks out of the woods but the woman from Smithers. Weird.
When we were in Karamea we saw this car drive by (your usual camry type rental car) that had a rack on it that carried a fishing rod from the hood up over the top of the car. It looked kind of slick. Right after we got to the car park for the caves, that same car drives up and parks right next to us. I had to talk to the guy and check out this gizmo. Seems he had come up with this slick 2-piece rack, both pieces had flat plates on the bottom that were magnetic and could be stuck anywhere on the car that was convenient. In this case one on the hood and one on the top. He had two nice rods on it and they are only held to the rack by small bungy cords. I don't know much about spinning rods but he had about $2000 worth of fly rod/reel strapped on. He said he'd been traveling around for 6 weeks and nobody had bothered it yet.
Judging by the accents I'm guessing they were Scandinavian.
They took off up the trail ahead of us while we got our head lamps out. When we got to the cave they were coming back grumbling about needing a "torch", which is flashlight everywhere else in the world but the US. I offered him my spare and we went down together.
It was a little bit of a mistake because he and his friend must have been geologists or something because they would yammer away in their native tongue about every tiny thing they came across, and they kept going farther into the cave. See the problem here is I had given them a $3 flashlight that I bought in the checkout line at Lowe's or someplace so I felt obligated to stick around until they got out safely. I don't know if you've ever been deep in a cave and turned off your light but it is frightening. You put your hand up in front of your face and stare as hard as you can and then you'll end up touching your nose without even realizing your hand was close. Of course the next thing is you start thinking about how screwed you'd be if your light went out. So our cave adventure lasted longer than I had hoped.
After everyone had returned safely from the bowels of the earth we hopped in the car and headed back down the coast bound for Westport again. Our timing had been excellent. We came around a corner and the road people were just working on a "slip" that had us trapped up there and we didn't even know it! They had just gotten half the roadway clear so we were off and running.
No comments:
Post a Comment