Fox River, The Cave, Bush mission and Hokitika

So After we explored the area.

The land entrance to the cave

Kurt doing some fire bending 

Wolf relaxing

We set up camp and gathered wood to build our fire "we had a little trouble getting the fire started, but after a short while fire was made".

It was now getting dark, and we had our warmth.. So we decided to make some rice. Using what we had collected we boiled water and sat waiting for our Kawakawa tea to be ready. As the night continued we thought of how Geoff would find us ??? But as it stood this was the perfect place to stay with the coming storm.
We thought we were, smoking out a seal in the depth of the cave, but we were actually just terrorising the penguin all day.
The cave was damp and dark.
The vibration of the waves echoed through our cave and although the bugs were biting we didn't use bug spray (because we didn't have any).
It was a sort of magical place, knowing that so many Maori's have lived in this very cave without the luxury of modern society, its such a treat to experience.
The floor was dirt, which the Maori's back in the day had place there so that they would be raised above the incoming tide. it was placed upon huge Kauri trees that were cut by Green stone hatch's, the markings were still visible on the wood. It's amazing how we spotted the cave just as the Maori would have back in those times. As we sat around the fire we came up with a little jam that we would like to share.

After finishing our first song we came up with another.

After our jam and some more food we decided it was time to migrated to our tent. Before sleeping Kurt displayed his concern about the smoke, so we moved our tent into a more ventilated area. 
During the night we were woken by the mixture of sounds, from the waves crashing, to dragging stones as the tide left, to the blue penguins chatting away to each other. It was simply nourishing to know places like this cave exist. We felt safer in this cave than anywhere else, we had made this very destination our home, and although just visitors to the life around us, it was enlightening.

In the morning we woke to a chilly surrounding we started a new fire.. Our day was revolved around how we could get a hold of Geoff?? there was a storm outside. Howling winds and heavy rain, we wait till noon before a plan came into mind.
The weather gave us a brake so we decided to leave the comfort of the cave in search of reception. As we walked, we couldn't help but notice this rough and jagged rock that looked like a sail it was a beautiful sight. Pillars of stone sticking out from within the watery surroundings, waves colliding and the roar of the ocean.
As we kept on walking our phones still could not find any signal. We were told to go to a curtain area and we might find it.

Apparently a reception area

Kurt struggles to find reception

we continued walking down this road. as we got to the end of it..... it start too rain heavily.. We looked around there was a digger and a truck lined up, we check if they were open, but they were locked, the rain was coming down by the bucket. So I decided to climb under the this truck, Kurt was still rummaging around to find somewhere out of the rain. I yelled out "its pretty comfy under here" and he climbed under.

Our cosy quarters under a truck

We ended up spending 10 minutes under the truck, while we wait from the rain to pass. After it stopped Kurt was sceptical to excite, but I jumped on out. The rain had passed, and we began our search once again.
After having no luck we walked to a house and asked an old couple if we could use there phone. We called Geoff, but he didn't pick up... So Kurt left a message that clearly stated our location "Geoff, its Kurt we are at Fox river in a Cave that's connected to the beach it's to the west of the Road when heading South." and that was it. Now all we could do is wait. Walking back into the cave to warm up.. Having very little to eat we needed to occupy our time, so we decided to do some bouldering (rock-climbing without a harness, at low heights, horizontally) ..

After that we came back to the fire to warm up once again, we then improved our living courters by collecting stones and making a pavement, so our feet wouldn't get dirty when entering our tent, also we made a wind break out of the wood we collect throughout the day..

At nearly dark we heard a flute like noise coming into our cave. It was Geoff!! he'd found us.
We sat around sharing stories for the rest of the night before we went to sleep.
And as usual, the penguins came out and the waves roared through the night.

In the Morning we all relaxed.

Playing music by the fire

The cave

Geoff's ankle was pretty sore from trying to find us (he didn't check his messages but instead called the number back, unfortunately he spoke to an old lady that could hardly speak and all he got from it was that we were at fox river in a cave, so he ended up walking an hour or 2 on a bung ankle upto the fox river caves thinking we were there, we weren't but somehow through luck he found us). So he rested while we searched the area out side, as the weather had finally passed.
We climbed on top of the cave, which was a little mountain. It felt like a little forest.. after viewing it decided to come down. on the way back we found some "supple-jack vine" which we used to absail down the side of the cliff.

After that we were still bored. so we had an awesome plan to jumping into the Fox river and have the out going tide pull as around and into the cave.. It was extremely fun being dragged out and going Hypothermic was more comfortable than we thought it would be. the warm rush that turns the cold feeling into a hot one.. Before leaving the cave earlier, we stocked up our fire so we wouldn't freeze to death when we drifted in from the sea :)
Now we warmed up, and left Geoff at the cave as we walked up to see the Fox river Caves. It was a 45 minute journey crossing river beds and small rapids.

Us arriving at the entrance to the cave -

It was indulging. We ended up walking into the cave for several hours.. it was dark and gloomy, almost alien like. as we continued we looked upon the calcium deposits which must be millions of years old. and to think these simple things are just growing in size continuously.

As we got to the end of the cave we turned off the lights to see what it would be like if our flash light ran out of batteries.. It was dark. so dark it felt like we had our eye closed, when they were open. so we stood in the dark and hummed, the vibration was unreal. after spending several hours in the cave we exited. feeling as if we might have time warped.

Simple things like sight allow us to see great complexities,  it's funny how being born with a gift like this makes one forget how special it is.

On our walk back to the cave we ran into some disturbed tourist. Who apparently nearly died crossing this river ??? we both found it kind of pathetic as the river couldn't have been running that hard to almost kill someone. anyhow they where traumatised so much so that they didn't want to cross it, so Kurt and I helped then... "Geoff went up to this cave the night before looking for us and stumbled across the same tourist who clam to have meet Geoff, as Geoff described they were behind him as he was walking and crossed the river. saying it wasn't to bad.." Anyhow they insisted on telling us there story, frankly I was bored of it and so was Kurt.
As we walked with them we spotted some young goats. And I was hungry, Kurt and I look at each other and said "dinner" the tourist pleaded with us to not try hunt the goats. However they had no idea that we had been eating milk powder and sugar for the pass several days and that goats are such bad pests. so we gave them the option of being our dinner instead. they weren't to happy with the comment so we both ripped off our shirts, and crossed an even harder part of the river by swimming across it.
We were so hungry that we didn't think about our approach and ending up failing. all our minds could think about was how nice it would have tasted.
We failed and so that was it, so frustrated we made our way back to the cave. running into the same tourist but we had nothing to say to them as they had distracted us and now we had to eat mouldy rice with milk powder and sugar.

Arriving back and there was Geoff sitting in front of the fire playing his tin whistle. We told him about our encounters.
After a Milk and sugar drink we decided to make a huge fire. we collected as much wood as we could. for we had decided that we where leaving to Arans the next day.
we stacked and built the fire as large as we could. It became so hot that it started drying out the cave, and so large the flame hit the ceiling.
We did some epic chanting, for this was our last night , although we will surely return some day.

In the morning we parted with Geoff, and began biking well he hitched.

It was another beautiful day to bike and we made pace.

We stopped at the pancake rocks, they were very interesting but the amount of tourist made the event seem fake and meaningless.. although the rocks are quiet astonishing.

We continued again trying not to stop to often, although we were still running on milk and sugar and were running low on energy. We had a little break and finished off what was left of our food. soon after we notice we had just arrived into Grey Mouth which was around the corner.
We stopped at the Countdown. and then continued on to Arans.. only 30 odd km to go.. we used the cycle way. it was quiet amazing having many natives around on this little track, to bad it was light gravel, so we were actually making worse pace than if we were on the road.
We made it to the end of the track... Kurt and I were very confused so we checked his phone on our direction. "What!! We rode past Aran's ?? that's crazy!!" Frustrated we started riding back the direction we came. It didn't feel right and we were both pretty annoyed. We pulled over, to check it again to be sure......... We were going the right way some how the GPS on his phone messed up.. so we had just back tracked 10 kms which meant an extra 20 km was added to the trip by the time we got to Arans. Geoff was there when we arrived and I Finally after several years got to catch up with Aran once again
Melissa who is Arans girlfriend greets us, Kurt has met her before but since I've been in Canada studying the last two years I'd missed out on a lot. so I finally got to meet her. We spent one day there and seeing as they were working we decided to go green stone hunting in the rain.

It was lovely to catch up but we had a little adventure that we still had to go on. And considering Aran and Melissa had to work, we left hitchiking back up to Fox river to go bush.

It didn't take long for us to get back to fox river. Driving in a car is pretty effective.
And we made it to what's called the ball room (a huge rock overhang the shelters the area below from the weather.... Looks like a giant spaceship is hover above you) in no time. (our photos are really terrible and fail to show the vast scale of the place)

Geoff eating

Part of the overhang

Our campsite

Kurt walking up to the campsite

We still had day light on our side so we gathered wood, as we would now need a fire to keep us warm as we left our tent at Arans.
It started to rain as it the light faded and the temperature drop significantly. the night was cold and later we found out it was around 4 degrees Celsius, luckily we had a nice fire to keep us warmish through the night, and yes it was a long night as the fire would die out and we would have to take turns waking up and restocking it..
In the morning it was colder than expected, but we really wanted to find a goat. so we got our things together and headed out on the scout. We scouted and waited for many hours and nothing. It was disappointing but there was nothing we could do, so we started collecting more wood.. 
Just before night fall, we had several tourist coming to seek warmth as they walked into the bush to check out the Ball room where we had set up camp. we offered them warmth by our fire before they headed out.
It was now right on dark when another traveller entered the area. she was from Chicago USA we offered to her that she could share our fire. so she joined us.
We chatted, through out the night. We all decided that it would be a good idea to throw Geoff's Butane canister onto the fire, it was a great idea until it went BOOM! and embers went everywhere, putting holes through out our gear. which is awesome seeing as our stuff needed to get a little wear on it :). The noise was great though as the Ball room amplified the sound and it continued to echoe down stream bouncing of the huge mountain sides. It just sucked getting holes in our sleeping bags (and seeing the precious feathers fly out), shorts bags. Plus I think the overly friendly Weka, who would scavenge the area thought it was a bit loud, although it didn't stop him from coming back and eating our potatoes.

Through out the night Geoff tried to kill a possum which climb around our area. Failing to kill it, we hid our food and slept coldly through the chilly night.

In the morning the American parted ways with us. We waiting until the sun came up and then journeyed back to civilisation.
After a long time of us boys hanging out it was time to part with Geoff. It was lovely to hang out, but he had his mission and we had ours.
We waited for a little while for a ride, but then got one with an interesting old couple who dropped us at Arans front door.


For the next couple of days we waited for the storms to past. but nothing came about. while on a little ride into Grey Mouth, Kurt's bag got caught in his back tire causing a fatal 7 spokes to be broken. I continued and rode into grey mouth finding a deal where the trust worthy bike store owner "by the name of Scott" allowed us to come in while he was not there and use his tools to fix it. Thanks Scott

Now we wait until it's the right time to move as the weather seems pretty unpredictable and we have no-one we know until Invercargil. Haha at least the one certainty is that the temperatures in Wanaka and Queens town will be hitting negatives next week when we get there!!

This time in Hokitika has been spent reconnecting with one of our best friend Aran. thanks for having us man. Much love.

Aran making pizza

Some sushi we made (new food we can make on the road)

Meme crocheting