We had a five day weekend for Easter and needless to say I took advantage of it. Last Thursday after everyone was done with classes Brit, Sarah, Monica, and I packed up our car and drove to Kaikoura, a small town about two hours north of Chch on the coast. We arrived pretty late and camped on the beach just north of town. Apparently it's an incredibly scenic place, but when we woke up it was foggy and there wasn't much to look at. That morning we drove further up the coast and had lunch in a garden in Nelson before continuing on to Takaka. Takaka is home to some of the best sport climbing in New Zealand at Payne's Ford and Pohara. There is a campground there called the Hangdog Camp that mainly caters to climbers (quite similar to Miguel's Pizza in Kentucky). The camp was packed with people from all over the place. The corner we set our tents up in had groups from the Czech Republic, Germany, France, and Australia. We arrived on Friday evening and met an English guy, a Scottish girl, and a Korean girl and climbed with them at Payne's Ford until it got dark. Payne's was about a 5 min walk from the campsite. The next day we met a bunch more folks from UCANT and climbed at Payne's for most of the morning and swam in the swimming hole until it got dark.
Adrian slacklined.
Monica backfilped.
Sunday we took the advice of my Canadian friend Hayes's flatmate's aunt and uncle and went to Wharariki (far-a-riki) Beach. It was one of the most amazing beach I've ever been to. The water was an incredible turquoise blue and was surrounded by dunes of super fine nearly white sand. There were grassy bluffs surrounding some of the beach that you could climb and jump from. The sea had carved caves out of the bluffs and some of the islands had huge arches in them. We ran into some seals when we were swimming and watched them surf.
Surfing seals.
Look close, were jumping in.
That evening we went to the Sea Cliffs at Pohara to climb. The crag is literally 100m from the beach. We stopped at an espresso cafe on a ship called the Physalie that apparently used to be owned by Jacques Cousteau.
If you look in the background you can see the cliffs we're climbing on.
This was a 24 (5.12a) that I only fell once on at the last bolt. It would have been my first climb at that high of a grade.
After we finshed climbing we walked down to the car and watched the sun set.
And heres some more photos from a different swimming hole with a rope swing and bouldering over water.
Nick
No comments:
Post a Comment