Seeing the snow on the hills from Christchurch we decided to head for it.....Arthurs Pass. We didnt really know what was there, we just went for the journey and adventure, what an adventure we had. After a stop off at some huge boulders in the Kura Tawahiti Reserve which we tried tried to climb and failed, we found cave stream.
Cave Stream is a stream which runs deep into the earth in a cave. In their depths somewhere there are a number of waterfalls and eels. As the water only just reached our chests we decided that the DOC advice not to go in if it reached your chest would be conservative and so we opted to go in and see how it went, or as the Kiwi's would say 'she'll b'awight'. We packed 2 torches, an emergency light with an emergency battery and donned our caving gear (as pictured!)... what could go wrong. We waded in through the initial pools freezing in temperature due to snow melt and into the dark. It was so exciting, feeling a little dangerous but they have signs to it so it cant be that bad, then the first torch failed.... its ok, we will just get the other out of the bag, so lights on again lets continue. We are here at a bend, listening round the corner I think there is a waterfall, but no I can't see because the second torch has failed. My little heart started beating a little faster and I clung to Charlie! So we got out the emergency light and made the sensible decision to turn around and come back to complete the length of it another day with better batteries and torches......... awesome experience though.
After this our visit to Arthurs pass was a little more sedate, we met the local Keas, walked the Devils Punchbowl to see a waterfall and the Bealy Spur Walk for the view and the snow. We built a snowman and met the mice in the hut. We headed back through Methven to meet with Joey in the Blue Bar. There are two pubs in town one blue and one brown so it was easy to find her!
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