(written on the 31st from notes taken previously)
I was up early again today. 🥳
Go me. 🙃
I was pretty shocked to find the sky’s super duper clear and a view of the Southern Alps in the distance. I hadn’t expected the clouds to go away, otherwise I might have stayed for one more night down south in the hopes of getting a clear view of the mountains from the coast.
With the view the way that it was, I toyed with the idea of driving all the way back. I think it would have been like $50 or $75 American in gas, and there was no guarantee that the sky would remain cloudless by the time I got back, so I decided to stay up north and not go back.
I did stop off to explore a potential natural hot springs on the Wanganui River, though. 😊
Butt first… there was no toilet at the freedom camping spot, so my first stop, another butt clincher along the way 😅, was for a toilet.
Good view from the toilet, though. 🙃
Ok, to the hot springs! After perhaps a one-kilometer walk that started along the river, and then went into the bush, and then returned to the river, I finally found the hot springs. (the instructions in one of the Google reviews for finding the springs were effective enough to get me there but definitely not clear enough to do so without me wandering around here and there wondering if I was missing them).
I had been warned ahead of time that I would need a shovel to be able to enjoy them, and I hadn’t brought one. The sand flies were so sick that I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anyway. 😅
In order to take a picture without being swarmed, I had to sort of run away and then come back and then take the picture within a few seconds. 😆
Man, those darn sand flies!
Sandflies are pretty much the only major drawback to New Zealand, and man can they be an enormous drawback.
I miss the 5th Water (Diamond Fork) hot springs in Utah and the Lussier Hot Springs in British Columbia. 🙃
But neither Utah nor British Columbia have what I visited next.
Hokitika Gorge!
🙃
Love that place. 😁
At first, I parked in my usual parking spot and just hung out there for a while, not sure if I was going to jump or not. Eventually, I got my day pack loaded up, including my wetsuit, and headed over to the bridge.
With all the rain, the color of the river was much different: it was sort of a pale greenish.
Compared to January, there were very few people visiting, which for the attention-seeker part of me, wasn’t optimal. 😆
Though it was only a couple months ago that I had jumped in, It’s always smart to double check the depth before jumping, just in case a sub surface tree got washed down or a flood put a sandbar where deep water used to be.
Of course, the odds of that are probably minuscule, but better to be smart and safe than injured or dead.
Not wanting to get cold like I did last time I did a depth check (last time I hung out on the shore while wet, chilling myself pretty good before floating down river in my wetsuit, chilling myself even more. 😆), I climbed down the place I usually climb up, jumped in, swam out, and did my depth check.
It was also better for me to do it without my wetsuit on, as the wetsuit, with its buoyancy, doesn’t allow you to go very deep.
As expected, I couldn’t touch bottom, so I was good to go if I wanted to jump. 😁
Aaaaaaand I wanted to jump. 🙃
So I put on my wetsuit, and over the course of the next few hours, I jumped several times. I wasn’t able to coax anyone to join me, but I did have several people ask my permission to be videoed in my jumps, multiple people offering to send me the videos later, for which I was grateful. I don’t have any videos of my jumps from this trip. 🙃
I called it a day rather late, one of the last people at the Gorge, I think. 🙃
Thinking I might want to stay one more day, I didn’t want to drive all the way to the nearest freedom camping spot, so I looked for places nearby that might be affordable.
Gratefully, Woodstock Domain was extremely close and was only $5, and actually turned out to be a place that Chase and I had stayed at last time, but I had completely forgotten about it.
I was grateful to find it again this time. 🙏
😊
As per usual, I veged out the rest of the night.
Good day 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 