Our day began on the 7th November in the Whistling Frog Campground and Resort, a campgrounds in the middle of nowhere really, but close to a waterfall and gorge #bonus!
First on the agenda for the day was to drive to the waterfall nearby. We had in fact driven there the night before to see glowworms, but of course we hadn’t seen anything else really due to it being dark. So when we arrived and began the walk it was wonderful to see the lush greenery, mossy trees and notice the path was right next to a high drop into a fast flowing stream. We definitely saw more in the day after compared to the night before when walking with just our head torches…
Along the walk we got to a point where we though it was the end. However tucked behind a rock was a sign pointing up and a rocky path to follow. We were relieved to know the small stream we were seeing flow over a few boulders was not in fact the ‘stunning waterfall’, but we were also not overjoyed by the steep incline, after all it was early in the morning. Up and up we went until not long after we found the waterfall which was in fact stunning.
As we were all taking pictures of the waterfall from the landing the walk finished at, Bob was over the side attempting to climb the side of the wall to get up. It was an entertaining sight to watch at first and then in the end he got up there, as did Alex to join him. Leonne and I decided to give it a try also, maneuvering up a lot better than the boys had. And it was worth climbing up for.
We had the waterfall and the whole area to ourselves which was wonderful!
After our few moments of enjoyment and photo shooting, we had to then climb back down again. Alex and Bob went first, then I, with Leonne coming down last. Now we had all taken slightly different way down, but Leonne took the most different/best way down. She decided it was too high to shimmy down on her butt, and so slide down on her stomach, feet first. As you can see she had support from Bob and Alex, who was really just there for photographic fun. Sorry Leonne! And not sorry Alex haha!
There was some generous laughter from then on until we got back to the car.
After being back in the car we then only drove a small distance to the Cathedral Gorge car park. It was already quite full, but given the gorge was only visible for a certain number of hours a day, it was a given. You see, Cathedral Gorge is in fact most of the time filled with water. It’s situated right on the beach and is only accessible during low tide. So after buying our tickets, because you pay $5pp to access the beach, we walked through some seriously lush forrest for a good 1km, all down hill I must add, to the beach. Once there we walked around 200m and arrived at one out of two of the gorges entrances.
We walked in and to walk through and out the other side can be done in 5 minutes. But we took slightly longer, taking a large amount of pictures, using the entrance as our lighting/darkner for cool shots.
Once we had explore the cave, taken way too many pictures, which we wont share all with you because that’s mean, and enjoyed the beach, we made our way back to the track to head up. And yes it was a very long up hill walk, Alex really enjoyed the whole process…. Along the way we stopped a number of times, because all that walking does make you hot. At one of those stops, I decided to stretch my legs and so placed one of my legs on a tree truck, which was on the edge of the path. Please note the tree trunk was hollow and on the side on the cliff walk, was a not sheer but slightly steep drop. I must have not positioned my foot right because as I stretched my hand out to my foot, my foot then fell through the tree trunk into a hole which then feel through to the void between the tree trunk and the trees below it. Now my body did not disapear into the trunk and I did not fall through it down a hill side, but half of my body did disappear into the hollow trunk, with my leg dangling there underneath for a few seconds. Of course as this happened we all cracked up laughing, with Leonne pulling me out of the trunk and dusting me off. I only ended up with some bruises but mostly it was just hilarious!
After that we didn’t stop much and definitely no stretching! We eventually made it back to the car and headed on our way to some slanting trees due to the wind. Along the way we noted signs saying the road to access them was closed, and so instead we just went on a lovely coastal drive all the way to our end destination for the day, the town of Mossburn. Or more specifically the Mossburn Country Park just outside of town.
When we arrived and checked in, we were given some food to feed their Sheep and Lama’s!!! I mean I understand that this gets kids excited but really it got us going too! We parked our cars and went straight for the animals. We fed the Lamas first and they were definitely cute, but very shy and only came over to eat, which they did a lot of!
We then went to feed the sheep, who followed us around like sheep whilst we had food. They then just scattered off making sheep sounds. But how cute are they when they did want our attention **cough cough food…?!
With our kiddy farm fix we first did some washing and then all hid out in a little hut where it was warm and researched some activities. We were specifically looking into activities to do whilst in Queenstown in the coming days. After some deliberation and nervous agreements we booked a bunch of things and then went to cook dinner.
A little time after dinner, Leonne had already gone to the car and we were cleaning up when Alex went out to check the washing. He came back less than a minute later and said it was snowing. Now when he said this we laughed and said yeah yeah, because Alex loves to joke. But nope to our surprise, when we went outside it was in fact snowing. There was a light layer of snow in the benches outside and slowly but surely the falling snow increased and it got bigger. All the while Leonne was in the car unaware of what was happening. Bob went to get her, she was shocked to see snow falling and when they both came back to the kitchen it was clean there was quite a bit of snow coming down.
We were so shocked and seriously freezing! And we weren’t the only ones.
The owner of the park came to turn lights off whilst we were admiring the falling snow. He told us the weather change was crazy, and he didn’t seem happy about it. When he told us that the week before they had had a heat wave over 35, it made sense that this freak snow was a little out of the ordinary.
But back to us being shocked and frozen! Which may have been due to the fact that we washed all our clothes including socks and had chosen to wear thongs whilst they dried. Unknown to us it was going to snow. So when we eventually had the courage to walk to our car to go to bed, we got a little wet.
Once in the safety of our cars, with the hot water bottles and Alex wearing his thermal swim rashy, we went to sleep with the snow falling all around us, unsure of how long it would last. I secretly wished it would continue all night, and you can read our next blog in a few days to find out if it did and what happened….
anda_ontour 
Oh how I would have loved to see the photos of you falling through the log!!! Now that would have been priceless.
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Haha if only we’d caught that on camera
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