Pupu Springs

While the sun blazed down on Takaka and made climbing near impossible, we looked for new ways to cool down. Luckily Payne's Ford is blessed with several swimming holes with cold water. We explored these a little more. The pictures all come from Pupu springs which boasts to have the clearest water in the planet. Unfortunately, swimming was banned in order to protect the pure water quality, and we had to take more drastic measures to cool down.

The crystal clear waters of Pupu springs.

The clarity of the water made estimating the depth deceptive; this submerged tree was probably at a depth of about 8m.

The water came straight from underground and was extremely frigid.

Sweltering in the sun as temperatures were in the thirties and merely staring at cold water wasn't doing the trick of cooling us down. The only place we could think of that would cool us was our air conditioned hire car, solely with the aim of escaping the heat we decided to drive north to Wharaniki, the most northerly point on the South Island.

I should point out at this stage that Takaka and indeed Abel Tasman are sheltered in The Golden Bay under the protection of the most enormous spit I have ever seen. As we drove North the land to the West got steeper and steeper, finally as we approached the northerly tip we crossed the hills and were blasted by strong wind and drizzle, and moreover, it felt unbelievably quite cool. The weather was so bad, it not only felt like Scotland but the camera stayed safely in the car. I'm sure what we saw was North Cape on a fine day. The vegetation was dwarfed and all the trees bent dramatically towards the land. After a couple of hours the novelty of being blasted by wind and rain wore down and we drove back to Takaka, within a few tens of minutes we were back to a breezeless scorching day.