On Monday Stuart gave us a lift to the bus station so we could catch the bus to collect our hire car for the next leg of the journey; public transport in New Zealand outside of Auckland and Wellington is poor, having looked at buses, flying, train or a combination of the three it was easiest to hire a car to see Gay in Tikokino, Central Hawkes Bay. Our chosen steed was a Toyota Corolla Saloon, (1.8l CVT).
We had decided to split up our drive to Hawkes bay with a little bit of nostalgia.
The Blue Springs near Tirau has continued to be on our list of favourite places in New Zealand, and we couldn't resist seeing if it matched up to our previous thoughts.
For those of you that don't want to go back and find the original post - This is a walkway upriver to a spring. The spring is deep underground, where the water takes up to a 100 years to filter through, emerging as a clear, fast flowing river. As a result of the lack of impurities the water coming up from the spring is blue. The colour goes back to clear further downstream.
The 90 minute walk was only slightly less impressive as we knew what to expect, but the changes in the landscape and the colour of the water was no less stunning.
Our only disappointment was that previously there had been a tap at the end of the walk to fill up on fresh spring water, but this has since been removed.
We were staying in an AirBnB in Tirau, but as it didn't have any kitchen facilities we drove to nearby Matamata and found a lovely Thai restaurant.
Until next time!
Joanna and David
