It is raining but it means nothing to sand flies – they are everywhere. Terrible, really looking forward to place, where they won’t be. The rain is pretty bad as well and means we aren’t able to make nice shoots of the falls. Decided to take a look on Buller river and try the famous swingbridge, which is the longest one in New Zealand.
Swingbridge was pretty close to our place and we were there in a few minutes. A bit harder was to find a place where to park, as there were a lot of cars, but we managed it as well and went further. Surprise, surprise, the swingbridge attraction isn’t just about the swingbridge but there is also a place for gold mining a lot of nice walk around, flying fox, supaman and jet boats. It was our place for today.
The bridge is really swinging and we were told it is possible to make a really nice swings – they just asked us not to do it with some pensioner on the bridge. So Vlada tried to run on the bridge and it was fun as well.
The gorge underneath is awesome so we took the jetboat and went further there to both sides. Got some informations about its history and other interesting information and went up to Ariki falls as well. They aren’t that much fall, in high water they completely disappear but at this moment we can see them. The whole trip took about 45 minutes, we did a lot of spins but (as we’ll find later on) it wasn’t really scary experience. If you want to experience jet boats and have a time to take a look on nature around – go for this one.
On the way back Vlada chose the supaman track and it took just a while to get him on. After he came to the other side he is a bit sad – lost his watch. He was looking for them for a while and then another girls came on the flying fox and give him his watch, they found on the other side. He was really happy 🙂
The weather is better in the afternoon and it is time for Maruia Falls, again. This time it doesn’t take that long to take a look on them, prepare all our equipment and then first of them is jumping – Tomas. It was a bit hard to find the right way but after that the jump was nice and quick, the landing was soft as the water was really full of bubbles.
As second goes Vlada and after his jump another guys with boats came just to take a look. And, surprise, it was Czech guy – first who we met here. We talked for a while and then took all our equipment and went further – to Westport.
On the way there we just spotted a fire and give a call to local fire brigade, hopefully they found it (as they want really a lot of information about the place and we were lucky we had a map on us). Then just find the way to the beach and hope that the high tide is at the moment, as the waves were really strong – a bit scary experience when you came in dark and cannot really see where the ocean is.