The Three Sisters

The atlas that came with our van has these great little icons for all sorts of interesting places to hike, camp, surf, and generally…see stuff. To Carolyn’s never-ending frustration it even has Lord of the Rings film location sites, like Mt. Doom. The icon for these spots is – you guessed it – a golden ring. Anyway, a different one of these icons - a shiny star - is for geographical landmarks, which is cool because as extensive as our *cough* “research” is, we could never read about every great thing to see and do in New Zealand. So, luckily it was one of these icons that showed us the location for today's blog. A place called “The Three Sisters.” When we pulled over at the location of this site we just followed the brown signs and parked by the beach. More signs pointed us to a short hike around a cliff. Only problem was that the tide was obviously coming in and the cliff blocked whatever it was we were supposed to see. After a second of "what do you wanna do? I dunno, what do you wanna do?" we ignored the rising tide which promised to cut off our exit. What can I say, we had faith in that little star on the map. It’s a good thing we did. The Three Sisters is this amazing rock formation jutting out of the water along the rugged sandstone coast. It’s a lot like the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road in Melbourne, Australia. Erosion wore away the soil around the base of each pillar leaving each majestically stranded in the sea. Turns out a few years ago one of the pillars fell over, so technically it’s just the Two Sisters, but there are a few other bluffs and arches forming, so I’m sure the two ladies will have a younger sibling in a few hundred years. In case you’re wondering, yes, the tide did come in, and yup, we got pretty wet walking/swimming back to the van. But we loved our little off the grid adventure because we didn’t have any expectations, so they were more than exceeded. We love not knowing what each day will bring, and while we might get a little wet for not planning according to the tide charts, the adventures are worth the smelly shoes.
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