(written on the 7th of January and also the 14th and 15th of February… I might get some chronology wrong–crazy day, full notes taken way later 😅)
I got up relatively early this morning and heard the sound of voices, so I fired up the van lickety split and took off. 🙃
I doubt my chosen sleeping location would be considered acceptable… though maybe? 😅 I had parked near where a DOC hiking trail goes through the bush, I think? 🤷
Anyway, the drive down from where I was to the valley was a long winding road with sharp switchbacks.
I stopped to take pictures on the way down.
And then I made my way down faster than I was comfortable at times with people behind me wanting to go faster than I was going (New Zealand drivers drive much more quickly than I’m comfortable driving on narrow, winding mountain roads. Often come with the roads have no shoulders, and only very short pullouts randomly that you can’t see unless you’re going slowly. So your choices are often either go a lot faster than you’re comfortable to stay ahead, go away slower than you need to so that you can reasonably put the brakes on if and when one of those little pullouts comes up, or drive quickly so as to not annoy the people behind you, and then put your blinker on and slam your brakes on in a split second in order to be able to pull over and stop while still in the pullout area. 😅).
And my brakes are terrible.
Having been to this part of New Zealand before, I had planned to stop off at Paines Ford, which was just south of the town of Tākaka, maybe a 30-minute drive from where I had parked overnight on Tākaka Hill.
Chase and I had gone to Paines Ford three years ago on a rainy day, and the colors of the wet rocks were gorgeous. I remember being delighted with the beautiful eye candy of the many colors and designs of the rocks as I tramped around. I had felt perhaps a bit like a child in a wonderland. 😊
I had also taken a bath there and enjoyed a refreshing swim, so I thought I’d do the same this go round. 🙂
I never expected what my visit to Paines Ford would turn out to be this time:
When I arrived at the car park, the first difference I noticed was that instead of being the only vehicle (as I think we were last time?), the whole car park was packed.
😶
But upon walking under the bridge over to the river, I saw just a single person–a probably 20-something woman on the rocks next to the river soaking up the sun.
🤔
So many cars… where were all the people, I thought.
Looking out across the braided river in front of the woman sunbathing, at the downstream end of one of the stoney braid bars (picture smooth, rounded stones ranging in size from small pebbles all the way up to maybe bowling ball sized stones creating stoney bars instead of sand bars), I noticed a pan resting on the stones.
At first, from a distance, I thought maybe it was a gold panning pan, and I didn’t want to remove it as litter or forgotten, in case the owner was nearby and was coming back to do some more panning.
Then I noticed there was a path that I don’t think Chase and I noticed last time?
When we arrived last time, I immediately walked across the stoney river bank, carefully made my way across the strong current of the first braided river channel, then across a braid bar, then across the another braided river channel to the large braid bar in the middle of the river.
I then made my way down the large braid bar to a section of the river where there was a long cliff on one side with a large overhang on part of the cliff, an overhang big enough that you could climb up from the river onto the rock ledge and be under the overhang and out of the weather if you wanted (were it stormy).
It was there that I had bathed and swum and jumped from the rock ledge into the swift but deep Tākaka River, thoroughly enjoying myself all the way around.
This time, I followed this new-to-me path (I would guess that it was there last time, and I just didn’t notice it because I went straight to the water so quickly?) and explored it a little bit.
The path led all the way to the beginning of that section of cliff with the overhead where I’d gone swimming before, and it even continued on from there.
I think I needed to pee about that point, and I didn’t know at the time that there was a toilet back over by the car park and up another trail a bit, so I tried to find a nice little bush off the path.
As I poked around a bit, I noticed that someone had set up a rope swing in the same area where I had been swimming three years ago.
And that got me thinking… if there’s a rope swing that big (it was not small 🙃), then that means the river is deep enough to jump in, And if it’s deep enough to jump in from where the rope swing take off spot was, then maybe was deep enough to jump in from higher up. 😁
🙃
I think I needed to go to the bathroom after that, and not just a golden tinkle.
As I was walking back, I noticed that the pan was still there on the stoney braid bar, so I went over to take a look at it, and I realized it was actually just a regular cooking pan, a large one.
So I retrieved it and brought it back under the bridge toward the car park and set it up on a post with a rock holding it in place, such that it would be easy for anyone to see who went back to claim their pan.
Then I went back to my van and grabbed some toilet paper and headed over to the public toilet that I learned was down a dirt road not too far beyond the car park gate.
It was on that road that bunches of people were walking back to the car park.
Which answers the question of where everyone was.
I found out that Paines Ford is a place that people come from all over the South Island to rock climb. Apparently, there are great climbing cliffs up that path a ways, and people will go there for weeks at a time.
Wow.
Who knew? (apparently, everyone but me 😆)
After gathering up some stuff from my van into my backpack, I headed back over to the cliffs by the river for a little adventuring.
I hiked up above the cliffs and then came down in the spot where it looked like people would go to use the rope swing.
Someone had also set a fat rope, so you could climb from below (from the rock ledge just about the river) up to that point.
I figured that the river must be at least deep enough for a person to jump off from the rope-swing takeoff spot, as that would be just about as high as you’d be when letting go of the rope swing itself. If I had to guess, I would say the take off spot was probably a little over four meters above the water?
So… I made my first jump.
And didn’t touch the bottom. 😁
The next level up, perhaps seven meters above the water, required a little bit of bouldering. It wasn’t super difficult bouldering, just a couple of awkward holds, but the fall sure wouldn’t be pleasant if you did fall. 😅
I made it up without too much trouble, and looked down at the river below me. I’ve certainly jumped from higher up than this, but not knowing exactly the depth of the river, it changes the game a little bit. 🙃
The river was absolutely crystal clear, so I could totally see the bottom, I just had no idea how deep it actually was. But I figured that if I could jump from the lower spot without even touching the bottom, then it stood to reason that I could jump from the higher spot, and if I did hit the bottom, it wouldn’t be with enough force to actually injure myself, as it wasn’t a significant difference in height.
After scraping up the nerve, I gave it a jump, and again, I didn’t touch the bottom. 😁
So I jumped again.
And again.
To my delight, I didn’t touch bottom during any of the three first jumps.
Next up was actually trying to touch bottom. I figured I should do that at least once before trying to jump from the highest spot, which was perhaps another four meters above where I was.
So I did.
I think it was my fourth jump that I actually tried to touch the bottom, and I think I just barely touched it. Just barely being able to touch the bottom when actually trying to got me thinking that I was probably pretty safe jumping from the tippy top without trying to touch the bottom.
So… after climbing to the top, about 11 m above the water, I got my nerve gathered up, and made the plunge.
Victory! 🥳
Sweet victory! 😁
I probably have my chronology wrong for today. I spent the entire day at Paines Ford, but I don’t remember exactly how it all went down.
I want to say that I was the only person there when I was doing all of my depth testing.
I also remember running into the two guys that I met at Harwood’s Hole yesterday, telling them about the cliff-jumping spots, and that was when I was walking away from the area, but I want to say it was still relatively early in the day?
So I’m going to say that’s what happened next. 🙃
I ran into those guys, told them about the cliff jumping opportunities, and then headed back to my van for some reason?
Something like that. 🙃
Eventually, I made my way back to the cliffs for more jumping and playing around. People had started gathering there, using the rope swing, swimming in the river, bouldering the cliffs, sunbathing on the stoney beach, including a handful of 20-something? girls going topless 😅. I’ve been out of the loop on what’s trending in the world today, and I guess the generation that’s currently aged teenager to what… early 20s? has had a pretty significant pivot, on the ladies’ side, toward a more natural look–letting their body hair grow out instead of shaving it, and apparently… going around topless. 🙃
Who knew? (once again, apparently most everyone but me 😆. I guess there’s been a huge TikTok/social media revolt against western society’s beauty standards.)
Anyway, I spent some time hanging out at the top of the cliff, sitting down, feet dangling over the edge enjoying the sunshine, the beautiful river.
Sitting on that ledge quickly became one of my favorite spots to be–anywhere. 🙃
Eventually, after sitting there for a while, I decided to jump, waiting for a break in those using the ropes wing, as well as for those doing the different bouldering routes to be free from my splash zone.
Once free, I jumped–the only one there in long pants and long sleeves, I think. 😆.
After jumping, I climbed back up, and having seen someone else make the jump, other people began following suit, with me leading them to the jumping spot, and then encouraging them to overcome their fears.
It was lots of fun. 😊
Lots of people came to jump, New Zealand locals and others from all over the world–even some brave kids.
It was fun to meet locals and foreigners alike. Fun to watch the climbers bouldering the cliffs.
There were two main routes, one called Acid Test, which was a route that took you climbing like Spider-Man across a horizontal ceiling on some killer, but super challenging, limestone holds, and then up and around the side to the vertical cliff.
The entire day, I only saw one person complete Acid Test successfully, a man who’d been climbing the place for I think 30 or 40 years and was probably in a 60s?
I tried Acid Test myself and only made it about halfway across the ceiling, both my inexperience and lack of strength keeping me from being able to go further.
It was interesting being around girls who were just hanging out topless, sitting next to them on the ledge as they prepared to make the jump, seeing them just hanging around with other people, even kids, as if it were totally normal.
In some ways, I think more experiences like that would be good for me? Growing up as I did with the “private parts” of the human body being parts that no one of the opposite sex should see except your spouse… for a mind like mine, I think maybe that was less effective? (the combination of strong curiosity, perhaps mild compulsive behavior, and the propensity for addiction create a bad combination for someone like me?)
I don’t know, but I like the idea of being able to get to the point where the body is just the body, and though certainly we have sexual parts to us, and sexual attraction and experience are real as fundamentally dependent on those body parts, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they must always be sexual…
Thoughts…
Granted, it’s true, for me, at least, that most women’s bodies aren’t really attractive to me anyway (likely a consequence of having my particular “types” available at any time via porn and very few women in daily interaction matching my physical attractiveness preferences). So it’s true that seeing some of those topless girls didn’t elicit attraction because I wasn’t attracted to their particular body type, still, it does take my mind in that direction; And I wonder… would being around them, as well as women who do fit my attraction mold, so to speak, could that be good for me?
I think maybe it could?
Thoughts…
Anyway, at some point, after I’d jumped from the upper spot a bunch of times, I sort of made myself point man for the rope swing.
The way everything was set up, there needed to be someone to catch the rope and then bring it back for the next person who wanted to swing, or each person would have to boulder up that tricky spot to that second level where I jumped in order to gather the ropes swing and bring it back down to the jumping area.
I noticed that people were making a little hard on themselves by walking the rope over to people below, which made them need to come to the base of the little bouldering spot and then climb back up to the swinging spot.
Instead of having to do a handoff, it was easy enough to just swing the rope-swing handle over, so I sort of took over that job, thoughtlessly co-opting it from another climber who was getting the rope swing for people. 😅
Fortunately, when I realized what I’d done and apologized, he was super cool about it. 🙏
At some point I went back up to the top jumping spot and again hung out up there, feet dangling over the edge.
Such a great spot to just… be. 😊
At some point, there was a gentleman and his girlfriend who were doing the ropes swing, and she was absolutely terrified. So he encouraged her from below, and I encouraged her from above, and finally, after maybe 15-20 minutes of psyching herself into it, only to psyche herself out of it, finally she did it. 🥳
The same thing has happened with the rock climber who I’d co-opted rope swing duty from. It took him a long time to finally get up the courage to jump.
But he had eventually done it as well. 🎉
On the young lady’s second swing (I think she and her boyfriend were maybe mid 20s? She from Wyoming, and I forget which country he was from), I managed to get her swing on video for her. So I got her WhatsApp number and was able to send her the video clips of both her and her boyfriend swinging out and plunging into the river.
I think I stayed pretty much until just about everyone had left. 🙃
Then I hung out chatting with a guy in the parking lot for a good while before calling it a night.
It was late, so by the time I got into takaka to the local freedom camping spot, it was completely slammed period there were only a handful of places that were designated as freedom camping spots, but freedom campers filled nearly the entire parking lot, risking tickets.
I didn’t know that until I double checked the sign at the beginning of the parking lot and realized that the space that I had parked in was outside the designated area.
Not wanting to risk a ticket, I headed back toward Tākaka Hill, passing what looked like it might have been a freedom camping place by the side of the river, but deciding not to go there, as it wasn’t listed on the map as being a freedom camping spot.
I toyed with the idea of taking a road out into the middle of nowhere and just parking along the side of a dirt road or something, but with it being late, well after dark, I figured I might as well just drive all the way back to where I had stayed last night, as it was a known quantity, instead of searching around hoping to find a different place that was closer.
So back to that little overgrown power line access road (I guess I’m actually assuming that that’s what it is, as I never went far enough to drive all the way to the end), veged out for far too long 😅 and called it a night.
Definitely not the day I expected to have at Paines Ford. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 