The list of our favorite places in NZ is long, but one of the best days we’ve had here has to be the one we spent exploring Castlepoint.  Castlepoint is a bit out of the way from most everywhere else but is well worth the trip.  In a small area you get a little bit of everything from steep climbs, bashing waves, a picturesque lighthouse, a scary sea cave, cliffs, and stinky seals.  It’s amazing how many places there are to explore in what is a pretty small area.  Everything about the scenery here is dramatic, and we spent enough time to enjoy it at both high and low tides.

We arrived at high tide and walked up the trail to the lighthouse and then out and around on the reef rocks.  The waves crashing along the reef cliff were incredible and we often found ourselves dodging the sea spray.  Unlike Pancake Rocks on the South Island, you can get close to the edge here and really experience it!  We then made our way south along the reef and then up Castlepoint Rock which dramatically drops straight down to the ocean below.  However, the pinnacle of our experience at Castlepoint has to be the sea cave which passes below the lighthouse.

The sea cave is only accessible at low tide, and the trip out to it felt like some Greek Myth filled with challenges and tests along the way.  First we had to navigate the reef rocks, waves (we didn’t really wait for low tide) and the slippery clay along the shore.  Then, just when we thought we were almost to the cave entrance, we found seven seals guarding the path in.  They did not want to move, and we didn’t want to move them.  After several attempts to get them to step aside, we decided to just climb the rocks above them and see if that would work.  Luckily, after gaining the upper ground they decided to move on which was especially fortunate because if we had to smell them for one more second we would have gone the way of Aegeus.  After climbing up and over the seven seals we finally found the cave entrance.  Stepping into the black hole we were blasted by a mighty wind (not from the seals or whoever was in front at the time).  This cave has some lungs!  If you aren’t careful you could get knocked over walking into the cave.  Once inside, we realized that you can see the other cave opening on the ocean side of the reef.  And you can also see the massive waves come bashing through and sometimes closing off the opening.  And best of all, the sound of the waves is so loud that we were convinced we would be swept away or thrashed on the rocks–fodder for the giant octopus that legend says lives inside the cave.  Inside, there are tons of little pools, eyes that look up at you from below, and stalactites hanging from above.  We’ve never seen or experienced anything like it.  Luckily, we survived it all, made it out past the seala again and lived to tell the tale.  However, we did see a signpost for all of the “Lost Soles” that we can only imagine perished in the cave and fattened up that giant octopus inside.

We’ve again got a lot of catching up to do and I even need to look through the photos to remind myself of what we’ve been up to.  Oh right, the Wellington Beer Festival.  The festival was, of course, a blast.  We think that we’ve really found our niche working at these events.  Despite some pretty heavy rain there was still a good crowd of Wellingtonians who turned out and seemed unfazed by the weather.  As I would expect, as the day went on and the beer flowed, people seemed to become less and less bothered by the rain.  A few folks even showed up in their wetsuits and made the most of the rain and the beer.  One of the best parts of working these beer festivals is being on the receiving end of a wide variety of ploys, tactics, winks, nods, and begging all in the name of free beer.  We served beer for eight hours.  Which means that people were drinking for eight solid hours.  Which means that we were once again treated to entertainment of the highest quality.  But, the best part of being in Wellington for the beer festival was getting to meet up with our good friends Ron and Jill Trigg, Ursula (WWOOFer extraordinaire from South Africa), and the brewery’s newest brewer Tom.  It was like meeting up with old friends, and we had a great night out on the town the day before the festival.  We had quite a bit to drink, which worked in favor of us not drinking up all the profits the next day (It’s very easy to drink and pour at the same time during these events).  We really enjoyed the company of our good friends here and we will certainly miss them for the next few months as we head to the South Island.  We don’t know what are plans will be when we head back north, but it will be tempting to pay another visit to “Taradise” and White Cliff Organic Brewery.

We spent one more day in Wellington at Te Papa–the national museum.  It’s a fairly new museum–only 8 or 9 years old I think, and it shows.  All of the exhibits are very up to date and modern looking.  None of that stale green colored background with white lettering in all of the wildlife taxonomy exhibits that are so universal.  It’s really a gem of a museum, and we wandered around until we both had a serious case of museum foot setting in.  We had pretty much been through the entire museum at that point, so it was a good time to head out of the city and get back to exploring the countryside.

For the next couple of days we drove around to the sparsely populated Cape Palliser coast.  Joanie flirted with fur seals, we checked out the lighthouse and its 250+ steps, and we paid a visit to the Putangurua Pinnacles.  The little fishing town of Ngawi was also a highlight with their collection of colorful bulldozers that are used to launch fishing boats right from the beach.  Check out all the new pictures on Flickr to see more of what we’ve been up to.  The days went by quickly and soon we were back on our way to Wellington for our North Island Tour Part 1 Grand Finale!