it was a little bit cool in Takaka but the sun still packs a punch and we chose a cooler but sunny day to check out Paynes Ford, a local swimming hole and walking trail by the Takaka River.
There were a few cars in the parking lot but no one swimming. At first we thought everyone was at a different swimming hole, but after sampling most of the spots along the river I think the locals just weren’t in the water when it was 15 degrees outside.
Regardless we did some swimming, attempted some rock climbing and had a nice picnic.
I might need to find a good dentist out here…
Hard to drag Levi out of the water.
That same day we went back to our local beach in the afternoon and timed the incoming tide to practice some classic sand castle tide defense.
This is one of my favourite childhood beach memories at Rathtrevor. The kids didn’t quite get it at first but as soon as the tide began threatening our fortress it got real. It was all hands on deck.
Kylie was bang on with her guess of 10 minutes from first contact to complete tower dissolution.
After our first structure the boys moved on but Mikaya was in it for the long haul and we defended two more islands until the tide was fully in.
Mikaya’s journal: [We made 3 sand casls and we had 3 mots and 5 wols and one had a fase. One was a casl with a dekrtif shell and one was a grav for the ofr casl. and the one with the fase was named fred]
That night we used our leftover groceries and fruit from the trees in the yard to make a French toast feast! We even bought maple flavoured syrup and whipped cream to complete the food pyramid with plants and dairy.
The next day we drove up the coast to Patons Rock, a steeper beach with more swimming access. Swimming was definitely easier but still the biggest attraction was hopping rocks looking at tide pools and chasing hermit crabs and other marine life. Apparently there are penguins here and the kids were hunting but we didn’t see any.
On our last night we went out for dinner at the Roots bar. Very relaxed vibe and great food and lots of reading material while we waited.
Kylie took the above picture and marked one year ago today we were in a very different place. She’s happy to be here instead.
Our local horse was quite friendly by this point, also still very coy when we didn’t have apples obviously in hand. Like oh I’m just gonna chew this lovely grass 10 feet away and look up in surprise and toss my hair and run in a circle. Ok fine you can scratch my neck. But next time bring apples…
Goodbye Takaka! On to Abel Tasman and our first family backcountry adventure.
Then it was up and over the Takaka hill and down into heaven.
We were surrounded by cicadas and fruit trees and the beach was a short walk down the lane.
Zeke took this great picture of me that I promptly used to advertise our blog on social media. Nice work Zeke!
The next day we visited Pupu Spings, the largest freshwater springs in NZ. Beautiful clear water and a nice walk. We saw some Wekas. Little did we know we would become very familiar with the little devils in Able Tasman.
Mikaya’s journal: [We got to feed a horse and wen it relisd that we did not have applse it did a hair tos and now we call it sasy lasy]
