Oparara Basin Arches - Oparara Basin Arches 1350 Mccallums Mill Road

Very good gravel road to where the track starts. The walk itself is an easy walk enough to get your heart and legs pumping beautiful scenery. Excellent tracks with upgrades going on. The arh is totally awesome well worth the effort

We walked to Oparara Arch 25 min return at first. Then we walked Oparara valley track for 1.5 hours. We loved Moira Gate Arch. Nice walk in the forest. Crazy Paving and Box Canyon Caves are bigger than we thought. Definitely need a torch. Great fun of exploration in Oparara!

Oparara Basin Arches is an activity that should be at the top of your to-do list in Karamea! Make sure that you visit both the Oparara Arch and the Moria Arch. There are beautiful walks through the bush. Stop at the Mirror Tarn. Take lunch and spend a few hours up there. Drive up to the second carpark and visit the caves as well.

Oparara Arch is the largest natural rock arch in the southern hemisphere. Department of Conservation measurements list it at 219 metres long, up to 79 metres wide, and 43 metres high. Should you visit? The answer is definitely yes! The natural obstacle is the 14km gravel road you have to navigate. The road is terrible. If you have a 4wd vehicle, you will be fine. Department of Conservation, if you build it (tar seal road), they will come. The Basin only attracts about 10,000 visitors a year. Be prepared for a slow, narrow, winding and bumpy 14km drive along an unsealed road. That aside, it should be on every Kiwi's bucket list. The limestone was formed 35 million years ago under the sea. The Oparara river system has been sculpting the 35 million-year-old limestone into an intriguing complex of caves, arches and channels. You should be prepared to spend half a day here, travelling and visiting all three cave systems. It's worth it. Moria Gate Arch is 25 minutes from the main carpark, one way. Oparara Arch is 30 minutes from the main carpark one way. If you drive from the main car park, 2.5km further along the road, there is an easy track to the Crazy Paving Cave and Box Canyon to explore too, where, if you look closely, there are fossils to spot in the limestone, and glow-worms overhead. The Honeycomb Hill Cave option with Ōpārara Guided Tours in Karamea, enabled you explore areas not accessible to the general public because of their important content of the fossilised bones of moa and other extinct birds. Department of Conservation does not let anyone take pictures and to stop them from being published online. To prevent the overseas tourists in particular, souvenir hunters from looting and ransacking the place. Mirror Tarn, Oparara Basin Also in the immediate vicinity is the Mirror Tarn, a still pond about the size of a rugby pitch. Tall beech trees grow right to the edge of the water, sheltering the surface from any breeze. The leaves of the beech trees fall into the water and release their tannins, staining the fresh water a dark tea hue, which allows for a perfect mirror of the sky. By the way, the water in the pictures isn't polluted. The West Coast receives over 6 metres of rain a year! If you come here, it will rain 2/3 days of the year and is like a tropical rain forest. The brown coloured water in many West Coast forest streams is a natural accumulation of tannins leached from the bark of Nothofagus species, leaf litter and humus. The white foam is mostly made up of the remnants of aquatic organisms like algae.

The very first thing that attracts your eyeballs is the colour of the river, when you are walking along the river up to the Arches. There are a few hiking tracks to the two major Arches, the tracks are well formed. The phones will be out of signal. The car park is mid size that allows more than enough cars any one time. Great bush walk experience. Strongly recommended

Could be an intimidating drive for a city slicker, but fine if you are used to backroads. Beautiful location and a relatively short (20min one way) walk to the Moria Gate, which is incredibly awesome.

The road up is an experience in itself. Some of the arches and caves are free to visit. We also paid to do the cave tour which was very interesting and allowed you access in small groups. We saw moa bones and Glowworms. Lots of sandflies at the picnic area so be prepared!!

It is written there that it had been sea, years ago. Then sea level dropped emerging this cave. It is a 1km walk. Public toilet is available but I did not notice any dustbins located. There is some notices set up and inside those buildings, seating and tables available if u wanna enjoy some food with ur travel companions. No network coverage since u turn from the main road.