raggles.kiwi

Honeycomb Hill

Honeycomb Cave is located in a specially protected area near Karamea, requiring permits to visit.  In order to get a permit, your group of no more than four must be led by someone who has been through the cave three times before, and all must be NZSS members so it can be quite a performance getting all the right people together.  Fortunately for me others had done all the hard work, and all I had to do was turn up!

As we had a large group spread over two days, I spent a day doing all the tourist stuff: Box Canyon and Crazy Paving caves, the Oparara Arch and the Moira Gate/Mirror Tarn loop.  We saw many spiders and egg nest thingies hanging from the ceiling in Box Canyon cave, apparently one of the best places to see them.   The whole area is very scenic, so many photo stops were made to try and capture the surrounds.  Unfortunately the big contrast on bright days and the enormity of the arches makes them quite tricky to photograph.

On Sunday we went through Honeycomb, taking a loop around the cave and exiting onto the Honeycomb river.  With numerous entrances (often from above) it never really feels like you are underground for long, with sunshine beaming in from above a regular occurrence.  The place is littered with bones of all kinds of creatures;  Moa, Kakapo and Haast's Eagle among them.  The really special parts of the cave generally off limits, but there was so much to see it isn't like one leaves disappointed.  It started to rain as we existed the cave, so apart from a photo shoot under the Honeycomb Arch, we didn't hang around.

On Monday myself and a keen companion were really keen to follow the 13km Oparara Valley/Fenian track back to Karamea.  To save time on the trip home we felt compelled to run most of it which meant missing out on a stickybeak in to the Fenian Caves.  I suppose you have to leave something for next time...