2 Best Sights in Kahurangi National Park, Upper South Island and the West Coast

Kahurangi is a vast wilderness of marbled karst mountains; glaciated landforms; alpine tablelands; rivers; alpine tarns; and beech, podocarp, and coastal rain forests. Underground are the country’s longest, deepest, and oldest cave systems. Multiday hikes, short walks, caving, extreme rafting, fly-fishing, and hunting are what people like to do here. Kahurangi National Park spans 1.2 million acres, much of it untamed, yet crisscrossed by 570 km (353 miles) of hiking trails of various levels. Most well known is the four- to five-day Heaphy Track, one of New Zealand’s Great Walks. Probably the most popular road access from Nelson is the steep, slightly scary climb to Flora Carpark on Mt. Arthur, and from Golden Bay its into the Cobb Valley. The main West Coast access is through Karamea; this is also the southwestern entry to the Heaphy Track. Helicopters regularly transport fishing fans to secret river spots, though large areas of the park are designated wilderness, where no development or helicopter transport is permitted.

The magical rain forests and sculpted landforms here are amid the Honeycomb Hill Caves Specially Protected Area that's within Kahurangi National Park. Spectacular features at Oparara include a series of huge limestone arches (including the largest in the southern hemisphere, at 470 feet), passages, and caverns. Several short walks explore the caves, which are about a 45-minute drive northeast of Karamea. The Oparara Valley Project Trust, a community project, has enhanced visitor facilities and offers guided tours that can include both walks and kayaking explorations. Also in this cave system is Honeycomb Hill, featuring underground passages of more than 13 km (8 miles) that contain the largest collection of subfossil bird bones found in New Zealand; many of them are extinct, including nine moa species and the giant New Zealand Haast's eagle. The caves are protected, and access is by guided tour only.