today we went to the beach, but we don't have any pictures since it was spontaneous and we didn't have the camera. we might go back tomorrow though, and then we'll post some pictures.
in the meantime, i'll show you some pictures from our trip last weekend, which was not spontaneous and therefore we had the camera.
first we drove through buller gorge and stopped off to cross the longest swing bridge in new zealand. while the bridge isn't super high (in the picture below, double the distance between della and the bottom of the photo to get an idea of where the river is) it does happen to sit right next to a faultline, and swimming is not allowed in the gorge due to the fast moving currents. both of these factors add to the excitement of the crossing.
then we went to punakaiki, a small, chill town on the west coast. punakaiki is known for its pancake rocks and blowholes, which are limestone formations apparently - scientists are not exactly sure how they came to be - formed millions of years ago when lime-rich fragments were deposited on the seabed and then overlaid by layers of soft mud/clay. eventually the seabed was raised by earthquakes to form coastal cliffs, with the result being that the weaker layers of mud/clay were carried back into the ocean by waves, wind and rain.
very, very slowly the limestone is also being reclaimed by the ocean and geologists expect that the pancake rocks will have disappeared within a thousand years. due to this characteristic, large sections of the cliffs will sometimes collapse into the ocean to create caverns and small gorges. then during high tide the waves run into the caverns and erupt through the blowholes left behind by the various collapses. notice, in the second picture below, that those are people on the bridge formation.
also, because of the southern alps, the west coast typically gets between 15 and 21 feet of rain a year and the land is overrun by lush rain forests, so the majority of the pancake rock cliffs are covered by dense flax.
lastly, we checked into a beach hostel. here is a shot from the front yard.
