Takaka to Farewell Spit.

To Collingwood.  Sunday 14th February 2016

We set off for Collingwood & we stayed in a motel grounds for three nights. We caught up with the washing & had some big showers.

Hand made chocolates at the Rosy Glow Chocolate Shop in Collingwood.

Wharariki Beach

The road to Wharariki Beach, which faces the Tasman Sea, is mostly sealed but we had about 20 mins of dry corrugated dirt road at the end.  A 20 minute walk over a farm brought us to an amazing site. White sandhills cascading down to blue surf breaking on the beach.

 

Two inhabitants of Wharariki.

 

Farewell Spit.

Terry took the trip to the Farewell Spit lighthouse leaving Collingwood at 7.30 am & returning at 2.30 pm. As 7 hours was too long to leave Oscar, Catherine decided that she would look after him & have a welcome break from Terry.

 We passed by large flat areas where the tide went out about 10kms. This is where there are whale strandings inside Farewell Spit. One year there were 300 Pilot whales beached & about 800 people came to assist in keeping the whales upright & wet. Some helpers flew over from Christchurch & most of the whales were saved. Any injured whales are put to sleep otherwise their cries cause the freed whales to come back to help them. Any larger whale species die due to their own weight pressing down on vital organs.We don’t wish to make this story too boring so a lot of the ecological detail will be left out.

Farewell Spit is a living thing, growing all the time, the sand starts out as fine rock deposited by rivers running to the west coast from the Southern Alps. As it gets taken north by the ocean current & gets deposited on the beach, it gets ground up finer & finer. The prevailing wind then blows this very fine sand up the beach to form the sand hills.

The Lighthouse.

As you can see the lighthouse is undergoing a major face lift. They are water blasting all the old paint off & then they will repaint it. There is no water out there so all the water has to be trucked in along with fuel, & food for the workers. It is 37kms out to the lighthouse, which used to be at the tip of the Spit. The end of the spit is a further 9 kms on, now.

Birds & Fur Seals.

We had about 12 different species of birds shown to us but they were mostly too hard to photograph without spending a day just on birds. Many of the birds on Farewell Spit migrate every year to places as far away as Alaska & Siberia. I think it is the Godwits that fly non stop to Alaska, losing half their body weight, arriving there in a week. There was a Gannet Colony recently formed & where we stopped was the flight path to the fishing grounds. They just flew in small groups directly past us.

Cape Farewell

On the way back we went to Cape Farewell (named by Cook) which is the most northern point of the South Island.