One Stage at Canaan Downs

Just before leaving the West coast we had a choice of driving about 70 KM up a road to the end of it that arrived at a cave full of carnivorous snails and spiders the size of small dinner plates, but as you may have already guessed, we decided not to as neither of us found the thought of crawling into the dark hole full of creepy crawlies very appealing!!!! and plus it would have drained our petrol!! So we headed up toward the north and golden bay, on the way Teilo walked accross n.z.’s longest swingbridge, and zipwired back!!

We spent Christmas on the beach where we went for a nice cold dip in the sea and got sunburnt for the first time ever in december! and then drove over a huge mountain and down into golden bay, we staeyed in a free campsite in a town called takaka, which was lovely as it had a river nearby and it was so hot the only thing that got us out of bed each morning was the thought of jumping into it. from there we vistited some of the biggest fresh water spirngs in N.Z. which were amazing crystal clear water pools about 4mtrs deep bubbling up from up from below the ground that supply the whole area with their water! also we went on a hike up a steep mountain along a winding path getting more and more sweaty and fed up, but it was well worth it as when we got there the mountain had a really eerie massive gaping cavern its side full of thousands of stalactites which we explored for a while it was wicked!!

Back at the campsite we met some really sound people, including a couple who were on their honeymoon, who sold us a really cheap free ticket to cannaan downs new years festi, so we quickly went out and bought another one. We celebrated Sam and Hedd’s birthday on a huge white sandy beach, haha boys!!

We drove back to the top of the massive mountain to the festival, which was wicked, loads of really good music, mainly reggae and dub, and it had a really cool introduction to it where a load of crazy people were dressed as the spirits of earth, air, water, fire and dance and welcomed everyone to the festi by leading a huge procession! and for the countdown there was a big display of firetwirlers and fire poi people dancing about! Some crazy people tried to see how many tents they could take out with their early firework display, our tent was fine though luckily!!

After the festi we drove back along the 19 km dirt road back to civilisation,  and we made our way through the pretty countryside of marlborough sounds to Picton where we spent a nice few days waiting for our ferry crossing to the North island in a paid campsite where we had well needed showers, sleep, and watched tv and ate loads of ice cream!!!