July 29th
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2008
1
25
33
Trip End
Aug 30, 2008
Takaka,
South Island,
New Zealand
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Today was a full day. We slept in until 10- 10:30 this morning. Had a lovely breakfast of cereal, a banana, a kiwi and some awesome grape juice. We then walked over to the Icenter and planed our day. There is lots to see and do in takaka but we decided to go look up the cape towards the west side instead of going into Able Tasmin park. I wish I were staying here longer so that I could see that to, but I'm not so there we have it XD.
Today cleared up nicely. We did have some rain but it was only light showers and they didn't last long. We packed our lunches at the Grands place (Golden Bay Motel) and drove up to the largest fresh water stream. Te waikoropupu springs. It was amazing to see because it is very long and wide. The largest amount of fresh water I'll ever see, probably. We then went to a beach, Parapara beach. It was nice even though it was cloudy and we found some wonderful sea shells. Scallops were popular, we found four or five shells that were still intact and each was a different colour. We also found a couple who use the sea weed as a fertilizer in their garden, apparently it helps to keep weeds at bay. We then when to Milnthorpe but it was low tide and there wasn't much to see. We did get a good look at some wild birds that weren't too afraid of our car.
In Collingwood we went to another beach, not much to look at either for the first hundred meters but then it opens up and becomes sandy. It's beach houses many cockles and we saw many people walking along it's shores picking them up for supper. Outside of Collingwood about 20 meters is an animal farm or rather, a zoo. I got to see eels that live harmoniously with ducks, guinepigs, rabbits, at least 5 different types of birds and then there were more pens. There was a mother hen with her 10 chicks in a pen with a male and a female goat. A duck in a pen with a guinepig. A terky in a pen with some chickens. five peacocks shared a pen with a hen and a wallaby ( baby kangaroo! ). There was a pen with a whole bunch of chickens, one of which was black. Two dear were in a separate pen and the last pen before the exit held two emus!
After all of this we went on a cave exploring adventure. Only mom and grandpa came with me, Audry said she's stay in the car. It was amazing and I recommend it to everyone!! The guide was great, very friendly and talkative and the stalagmites and stalactites are well worth seeing. There were glow worms to, though they might not last long because one of their natural predators is killing them off.
Don't kill spiders, capture them and send them outside!
HugZ
Sabine Ng
