Riwaka Resurgence – Day 94

The main attraction of the day and our activity today is the beautiful Riwaka Resurgence. Which is a sacred place for the Maori.

This morning we are waking up to a beautiful sunrise at The Barn Holiday Park in Marahau which is right on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park. But that’s not the national park that we’re visiting today. We are visiting its neighbour the Kahurangi National park. More specifically, we’re looking for the Riwaka Resurgence walk. As soon as we arrive it starts pouring down with rain so we are waiting the rain out by having a bit of lunch in the campervan and as soon as the rain calms down we are on our way. The Riwaka Resurgence walk is a very short walk and it’s ideal to do on a rainy weather day like today.

The place is engulfed in a lot of Maori beliefs and legends. At the entrance of the walk there is a Maori carving as well as a board that explains all those legends. It’s a sacred area for the local iwi and a iwi is the local Maori tribe.

The walk is then taking us through a really thick and dense bushwalk alongside a small stream. This forest is super dense. When we try and look through it, we can’t hardly see even a few metres. it is absolutely covered in ferns with moss and trees. this place is so awesome. The walk is quite a short walk. Only about 15 to 20 minutes until we reach the end where we see the Riwaka Resurgence.

It might sound silly but I have no idea how rivers are formed and where does the water come from so arriving at the resurgence which is literally the birth of a river it is really unique to me and I have never seen anything like that before. There is a massive hole coming from an underwater cavern which is feeding water onto the rocks and then creating the stream that later creates a river.

The resurgence looks like it’s coming from a super deep underwater cavern. It’s so deep we can’t even see the bottom and just above that is sheer rocky cliff face covered in ferns and moss. It’s a classic New Zealand sight.

An the way back we take the time to explore a little bit more of the forest that we just walked through. Because the rain has stopped for maybe a few minutes it gives us the time to stay a little bit off the track and get ourselves a little bit closer to the stream. there is ton of beautiful trees covered in moss ferns covering rocks it’s really really cool sight. At some point we even stray off off off the track to try to get some pictures of small waterfalls which are created by the stream. It’s a really awesome place to explore and it gives you a lot of room to roam around as the path is really easy to find once you’ve straight off track.

This is a beautiful river with lots of rapids and mini waterfalls so we can’t resist taking a few pictures even if it is raining all over our cameras. The we get towards the end of the track where we rush into our campervan before we get absolutely soaking wet. We are now heading back toward Marahau via Kaiteriteri which has a beautiful beach on the way back it’s a bit of a winding road and then once we arrive back in The Barn Backpackers we light up the fire and warm back up.

Finally tomorrow we’re going to get inside the Abel Tasman National Park. We’ve been all around it we’ve done so many activities surrounding the Abel Tasman National Park. Now it’s finally our time to get in and check out what New Zealand’s most famous national park is all about.