This is the Riuwaka Resurgence, right at the point where the water comes out of Takaka Hill. In its travels through the limestone of Takaka Hill, the water has been stripped of any impurities, and the water coming out here is as pure as the water at Pupu Springs, north of the Takaka Hill.
Places
This is Kaiteriteri Beach as seen from the southern end of Kaka Point. The brown patch behind the cluster of shops is the Kaiteriteri Inlet at low tide, and next to the shops is the mostly-empty campground. The hill behind the campground is covered in native bush, while the ones further away host exotic forest [...]
Where Takaka Hill Highway (State Highway 60) starts its climb up over Takaka Hill, the Riwaka Valley Road turns off to the left. At the very end of that road, there’s a carpark and a short walkway that goes up alongside the Riuwaka River to the Riuwaka Resurgence. The river starts under Takaka Hill, flowing [...]
This is part of a large chunk of rock on the beach at Split Apple Rock, and you can see how wave action is working on this rock, starting to break off smaller pieces.
This handful of sand is typical of the beaches in the Abel Tasman National Park. The bedrock underlying the park is Separation Point Granite, which erodes and crumbles into what you see here. The iron in the granite is what gives the sand its orangey-pink colour. You can see here how coarse the grains are. [...]
Once you get down to the beach from Moonraker Way, Split Apple Rock is just off the coast. The peaks in the distance are the Marlborough Sounds. The birds on the large rock behind Split Apple Rock are spotted shags (Stictocarbo punctatus), which are common along the coast in the Abel Tasman. During the breeding [...]
It’s easy to tell manuka and kanuka apart when they’re flowering, but how do you tell when they’re not flowering? It’s all in the foliage. The flowers and pods in the centre of the photo mark the tree as manuka. Its leaves are smaller and firmer, spiky to the touch. The clump of leaves being [...]
Manuka and kanuka are two New Zealand native trees that people find difficult to tell apart. It’s easy when they’re flowering: manuka flowers are set further apart on the branches than kanuka flowers, and manuka flowers don’t form the dense sprays that kanuka flowers do. These are manuka flowers.
This is another pic of the walk from Moonraker Way to Split Apple Rock beach. I can’t help but think the guy who named Moonraker Way must’ve been a huge James Bond fan. Or was he a Wiltshireman? An old story goes that revenue collectors caught some Wiltshiremen raking a pond to retrieve kegs of contraband [...]
This is Kaiteriteri Beach, as seen from Kaka Point. The sky is blue, the sea is flat, and the beach looks beautiful and inviting, almost like summer, but it’s not. What’s the giveway? No kayaks in the water, no people on the beach. On a typical day at the height of summer, Kaiteriteri and its [...]
