An early starts sees us boarding the ferry for South Island, unfortunately I missed the dolphins swimming across the bow of the ferry and the sailing through Marlborough sound as I was engrossed in my book for the whole crossing. Charles says Marlborough sound was stunning its beauty being the combination of sailing through a meandering gorge whilst surrounded by steep heavily forested landscape into which was built the odd isolated dwelling with no sign of road access. Boats rule ok!

Once off the ferry we had decided to head straight for the west coast,everybody had been telling us “West was best” so we thought we would check for ourselves. We had read that a beautiful but off the track area was the West’s most northern town of Karamea, this place was literally at the end of the road where the famous 80km Heaphy trail began (or ended depending your direction of travel) The Heaphy is considered THE wilderness walk and is a 4 day walk minimum, we don’t have any photos unfortunately as surprise we gave it a miss on this occasion!

So Karamea bound we were and our journey took us through the Famous Marlborough vineyards, amazing to see such an expanse of vines but we were glad when the scenery changed ( sorry Mr V you can have too much). Our Satnav slowly took us away from Marlborough and we headed into farming country ( sheep, beef and deer) and into and over the Buller gorge and pass, where (although for me with my fear of heights was a nail biting experience) the views were awesome.Karamea was no more than a small settlement of five hundred people with a real sense of remoteness yet we have both voted it our favourite place and we would defy anyone not to love the area and landscape. The camp site was part of the old Rugby ground at the back of the town school and run by a local committee who had provided some of the best facilities we have encountered on our travels.

We needed to hire a car to visit the wilderness highlight of the Oparara basin through which ran the access road to the Oparara arch. Our site manager Doug told it was not accessible by campervan and he pointed us in the direction of a local family that not only did car hire but also delivered the mail, ran the school bus and a weekly bus service over the mountain road into Westport.We walked into the “town” which was no more than a handful of shops and having organised the car hire via the information centre went for a coffee at what transpired was the epicentre of Karamea.

That evening we took a walk along the riverside to the mouth of the estuary and on to the beach which we shared with a diverse number of wading birds and not a human in sight.The river is popular for large trout fishing and in season the area is overrun by whitebait fisherman (no wonder at $80 dollars a kilo)

9am and the hired car arrived and after Charles returned from taking the driver back to base we set off. After twisting our way up a steep stony track we arrived at the car park from which the track to the arches started but before heading off we were intrigued by movements in the trees and spotted the rare Tui bird sitting on a branch singing its heart out. A plain black bird that looks like it has cotton wool balls either side of its neck of course we snapped a photo, we were also lucky enough to spot the rare blue duck during our walk.

The walk to the arch was interesting but the arch which was formed by the the water of the river interacting with the limestone and washing a hole through was itself disappointing. It was only a short walk so returning to the car park we took an alternative track to the mirror tarn which did in fact reflect all the surrounding vegetation, a quiet contemplative spot in which to quietly sit and enjoy nature. Further along we came across the Moria Gate arch much smaller than the Oparara arch which because of its setting we preferred. With all our meandering off track we had used up most of the day so our plans to also complete a walk through a palm forest was put off till the following day.

A perfect end to a perfect day was a beautiful double rainbow followed by yet another amazing sunset that we sat and watched until it had totally disappeared over the horizon.

Before leaving the following day we took a walk through the palm forest that ran alongside the bay and was where the Heaphy track either started or ended. Our aim was to walk to Scott’s Beach which was 45 minutes each way but decided to call it a day and make do with a few photos from the look out point and then get on our way to our next stop at Westport which was just a quick overnight stop so that we could visit the seal colony the next day.