Oh. My. Bugs.
We thought we’d experienced bad sandfly attacks before, but oh my goodness!
😶😬😵💫
When I woke up in the morning and looked at our windows, it was just nutty how many sand flies were on the windows, on the bug screen… in the air.
I took a video that shows at least somewhat how bad it was, though I can’t post it here. Gratefully, though our bug netting isn’t perfect, it’s pretty darn good. So we remained relatively bug undisturbed, though there were some here and there that got in.
After a bit of a crazy runaround getting all our stuff put back in its normal place and out of Sophie’s front seats, we continued our drive Southeast on the highway.
Our first stop was at a waterfall, I don’t remember which one at this point. Chase is a bit waterfalled out, so he stayed in the car while I walked down to take a look. It was definitely a pretty waterfall. We’ve seen tons and tons of them, but still, it was pretty.
Picked up a little bit of trash like I usually do, and then we headed back on down the road.
The next stop was something that Chase noticed on the side of the road as we were driving. So we pulled over, and took a look…
Buuuuut… I can’t tell you about it because if a certain someone reads this blog post, it’ll give it away, so I’ll have to come back to this post after the time has passed for irrelevancy to have run its course.
Ditto on the next stop as well because it’s too similar to the previous. Magical little place though. I’ll add it in a month or two. 🙃
[MISSING STORIES]
(Sorry, that’s a little note to help me find this via the search engine later in order to fill in the holes in the journal. Just can’t do it right now. 🙃)
Anyway, after those little adventures, we headed on down the road to the Blue Pools. The Blue Pools had been on our travel list for quite a while, so there was a bit of anticipation finally getting to them having been to so many places before. Also, since the Blue Pools was supposed to be another cliff jumping spot it was going to be a little bit of a comparison between what we had already experienced at hokitika Gorge.
The first impression, before we even got to the Blue Pools was that just like Hokitika gorge, the place was absolutely jam packed with tourists. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be bad. We had an absolute blast at hokitika Gorge, and it was definitely packed.
I wasn’t expecting it, but it was about a 20- to 30-minute walk from the parking lot to the Blue Pools.
And it’s really just one blue pool 🙃.
It was pretty cool, though. And really cold. 🥶
Having learned my lesson at Hokitika Gorge, I brought my wetsuit, just in case it was needed, and boy was it ever.
The bridge at the Blue Pools is only about half as tall as the one at the Hokitika Gorge. The water, however, was so cold that after only three jumps, I was so cold that I had to put my wetsuit on to keep on going. Even then, my body didn’t completely recover, staying somewhat chilled the rest of the time I was there.
We didn’t jump as many times as we did at Hokitika Gorge, but we still had a great time. The massive bruising on my left arm from slapping the water so hard at Hokitika, was now about the size of my entire hand, or bigger? and was a rainbow of colors.
Chase got super cold somewhat early on because he swam all the way across the blue pool and back, which was ice cold, without his wetsuit, so he got chilled to the bone early on and didn’t recover.
I tried to warm up by running down the trail and back, but I was still pretty cold.
It was funny. There was a huge crowd of people there, but I think only one other person in the water besides us? Periodically, someone would go in. Sometimes maybe two or three, but mostly it was just a crowded shore. 🙃
It was very cold.
The water was crazy cold.
After one of my jumps, I did the probably 50 ft or less swim from the landing spot in the water to get out spot, all underwater and my face was so cold by the time I got to shore but I think it hurt a little bit. I don’t remember for sure. I just remembered it being very very cold on my face.
Similarly to Hokitika, we were encouraged along, of sorts, by all the people who were surprised that we were jumping off the bridge into the water and who asked if we were gonna jump, wanting to film us. 🙃
Crazy Americans 🙃
After several jumps, and after getting cold enough that we were ready to leave for the day even though we enjoyed it, we left and headed toward a waterfall that a fellow traveler we met at there at the Blue Pools mentioned and directed us how to get to you.
So we drove over to a campground area, parked our car, followed one creek to the main river, crossed the creek, followed the main river to the second creek, and followed the second creek up, up, up to what I’m going to call Arch Falls (i don’t think it has an official name?).
The Arch Falls hike was a bit more like the other Stone hopping waterfall hikes. We just followed the creek all the way to the falls. It was a pretty cool falls. Probably oh, maybe 25 ft tall? 30? But it dropped into this almost like cup shaped hole that apparently was really deep because they said that people will Cliff jump off the top into this little hole that the waterfall comes crashing down into, and then it spills over the top of the cup.
I hope that makes sense.
It was pretty late in the day by this point, the Sun already disappeared behind the mountains, and we were a bit tired of getting cold for the day, so we refrained from jumping into that waterfall’s landing spot. It was a little hairy anyway, so between the challenging climb to get to a jumping spot and already having had enough of cold water for the day, it wasn’t that hard to walk away without the extra adventure. 🙃
If I’m remembering correctly, that night we actually spent fairly close to the Blue Pools. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind.
I’m really tired. 🙃
My love to all y’all. 😊
PLEPAEPBTYFT 🥰
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 