While Motueka was a lovely place, we wanted to continue to explore the surrounds of the area, and intended heading as far out to Farewell Spit as we could, bearing in mind that the tides would not be in our favour.
Our first excursion was to Takaka. I had heard lots of stories of Takaka but was completely taken by surprise not only at what a bustling township it was, but also at the size of the township. To get there we had to drive over the famous Takaka hill. The road up is about 18 kms on one side of windy road that seems to be uphill all the way, before 9kms of relatively easy downhill windy road. The road itself is in good condition, and there are lots of pullover bays so we could let the faster traffic go past us. The views were amazing and not easy to capture on camera due to how high up we were.
Near the top is a path to a lookout which we just had to stop and go look at. The path itself was interesting with the rock forms alongside it. Maori myth says that there was a taniwha that used to come into the villages to steal the girls and kill the boys. One of the princesses he took was very clever and escaped, and along with the men, she set up a trap for the taniwha. The next time he came, they caught him and threw him into a big fire. The taniwha tried to burrow into the ground to get away, but it was not successful before it died from the fire. The rocks along the path are the bits of the back of the taniwha sticking out of the ground where he had tried to bury himself. I have to admit, I can see how the rocks would look like that.
The views were great and we took our fill of them before carrying on to the township of Takaka. One thing that is very noticeable about this area is the emphasis on art. There are painted murals on walls, sculptures, and lots of roadside signs pointing the way to this studio or that one.
The township is attractive in that it is not pretentious – is is quaint, but well maintained and well used. There are not many empty shops here. The emphasis for food in this area seems to be organic, and wholesome food, and the coffee was great.
We visited a great art gallery here before driving out of town towards the bays of Pohara, Ligar Bay and Tata Beach.
All of these were beautiful places. We stopped at Tata Beach for lunch, and took the dogs for a walk and swim on the beach. I went to use the public toilets here and was very glad I did because they were also adorned with painted murals. I made Bruce go as well so he could see if the mens were similarly adorned, which they were.
The beaches themselves were sandy, and shallow and without surf waves, so ideal for two dogs to play in. There were several other dogs enjoying the beach at the time and Hunter had a great time with one of them.
On our way back from exploring these beaches we chanced upon the Pohara NZMCA Park, which we understand is pretty new. It looked like such a great spot we decided to camp there for the night. The camp is situated between two large breakwaters. The one on the eastern side is a commercial fishing wharf, as well as a smallish marina. The boat below seemed to be acting as a bit of a party ship with a few girls on the deck dancing up a storm to rock n roll music.
The westward breakwater houses the sailing club and some boat ramps. On the land between was our park for the night, and between the two breakwaters was a very sheltered harbour.
We were taken with the rock formations in the area. The road out to the bays goes through a natural archway, which is about where the eastern breakwater is as well. The backdrop to the camp is also made up of some fascinating landforms.
We enjoyed our overnight stay but were woken very early the next morning by a truck tipping out a couple of loads of big rocks onto the eastern breakwater – very noisy indeed. As we were well and truly awake after that we got ourselves sorted and headed out to see Collingwood and Farewell Spit. This was a journey of about 20kms.
The first part of the trip was through fertile farmland, with quite a few one way bridges. As we got closer to Farewell Spit the land got flatter and the road travelled right next to the water, and it seemed to be level with the water itself. There were many drains under the road, and the water was very strongly flowing frpom one side of the road to the other (underneath it). In some places the water was starting to encroach on the road itself. We looked down one side street near the spit itself and it was under water. This road was the access to at least a dozen properties that we could see.
We finally got to the DOC park at the beginning of the spit itself. We had intended to walk a way onto the spit but were stopped in our tracks by a sign that said dogs prohibited, even in vehicles, so we had no choice but to turn around and go back the way we came. The best we could do was take a photo from as close as we could get, and as the spit is fairly flat, the photo is somewhat uninspiring.
We did get some photos of some of the birdlife along the way though, and the birds are pretty prolific in this area.
We headed back through Collingwood, which is much smaller than Takaka but still quite arty, and made our way out to the Anatoki Salmon farm. Bruce had already caught one salmon at the Ohau Canals, but decided it would be good if I caught one as well. It was getting a bit late in the day, so we hoped the fishing was going to be a bit easier here than at Ohau.
Anatoki have a large shallow lake, all stocked with salmon of various sizes. There were some pretty large ones swimming around in there, but obviously they got to be pretty large because they were too clever to take the hook. However, I hooked a salmon on the third cast, and although it wasn’t huge, it was an OK size of about a kilo.
We could not help opurselves, so we kept fishing and ended up with one more each. Anatoki then smoked two of the fish for us and we kept one as fresh fillets.
To say the fish was yummy was an understatement! However, it was time to camp so after a little nibble we headed back to Motueka for the night
Away From Home NZ 