Xento's Fossil Beach (Golden Bay) Puponga, South Island, New Zealand
By MarMis on 02-Jan-12. Waypoint GC37RPX

This geocacher reported that the cache might be missing.

With all rain and storms this one has gone missing.

Hinemoana and I searched for a long time after walking for several hours across the Gobi desert into a strong wind but had no success...

Quite disappointing to not find, especially since we came the long way... No finds for a year with only DNF's, the cache needs to be checked.

Had a good look for this one, but could find no trace of it. There was one distinct place which matched the description, so I think this one is gone.

Had a solid look with a partner and could not see it. Re read clue, searching in many different spots but suspect it may be a gonner.

We searched and searched but had no luck here today.

Good find. Container rusty

Had to search bit in the woods. But then found. Need maintainance.

.There is a big rock there I have been eyeing up for a while. Was sure we were going to check it out. But no we are in the trees. And what intereting trees these are. The search party was on here. Took us ages to finally track down this elusive one with Bro making the find. Cheers.

Its a long weekend to Takaka, with Collingwood and Farewell Spit in the mix, with Zara Toby and Bullertrouts Bro. So lets go exploring. Visited lots of awesome places. But never enough time. I will be back.

After a rather exhausting walk back from Sandspit Beach with the wind blowing into our faces the whole way, we were happy to find some shelter from the wind and take a short rest. Some snacks later it was time to go back to the car, not without grabbing this cache on the way. TFTC!

TFTC! Needs maintenance

TFTC. Found with Lisa3x3x3.

Round the world trip Made it to New Zealand and will be traveling all around the Islands. After yesterdays arriving in Picton, I’ll spend a day in and around this area. Beautiful walk!
Thanks for bringing up this cache!
Vielen Dank fürs legen und pflegen und beste Grüße aus Leipzig!
Thanks for hiding and many greetings from Leipzig/Germany!

Cunning hide, great clue. We had done the Farewell Spit 12 km walk today, and had gone up the other side of the spit, crossed over the sand dunes, and then made our way back to this cache into an amazing headwind and sandstorm. It took us over an hour to get down the beach, and the distance and time between two caches is probably one of the longest ever in a single walk. As I sat down here getting the sand out of my shoes (which took me an awful long time), I spied a likely horizontal item. Much to the annoyance of my caching partner it turned out to be the correct location. She had been searching diligently for at least 10 minutes while I tidied my footwear!

This one kept us guessing!! Eventually we put a different point of view into the equation and one of us noticed something attractive to search. It was then obvious!! Great! TFTC and an FP

#1070. Driving with my group out to Farewell Spit today, I struggled with the Earthcache but didn't have too much trouble here with this one. Although in saying that a muggle friend found it after four of us spent at least five minutes looking. Sometimes having a second or third extra pair of eyes helps! Thanks for the cache!

TFTF - Found with my mate nzseries1 and friends as we enjoyed a walk to Fossil Rock. Passed a large seal basking in the sun on the beach and found time to stop and search for this cute little cache. Great hide and clues but is it in the left or the right of the path?

Danke

Nice spot exploring with the kids

New Zealand we are back again.
Hoping to find some caches at secret or interesting locations we are with the motorhome on the road.
Today we visited Fossil Beach and had a nice walk at the beach. The Golden Bay we enjoyed last time allready.

Thanks to MarMis for hiding and maintaining.
Best regards
DiaMiKu from Germany
21. November 2019

Very nice hide! Thanks for the cache and greetings from Hamburg Germany

Found as a part of a previous group TanjackMüley, now WanderingSparrow. Now I'm continuing on my own. TFTC

Quick found after our 3 hour loop walk. Hard to walk on sand and no skeleton apart from dead seals and fish washed up thanks for the cache.

Niice one! )tftc!!

Rusty yet cute. Where are the skeletons??

Found with helnel123

Nach der schönen Wanderung auf dem Farewell Spit gabs dann auch noch einen Cache zu suchen. Der .war echt fies versteckt und ich habe ihn wohl eher zufällig entdeckt. Ich bin jedoch sehr froh über den Fund...

Found on our short work to the beach. Because of very high tide the path along the beach on the other side was not accessible.
Saw a seal on the beach at the southern end.
TFTC
Family D
Denmark

Camping at nearby Pakawau and today we are out exploring to try and keep out of the wind.
No chance here today so this was just a short walk...not going any further to be sand blasted.
TFTC MarMis

no luck

Cache tin is heavily corroded but we could open it to sign the dry log sheet. TFTC

Didn‘t expect to find this one quickly. But - taataa - we managed to spot it right away. Tftc!

Found after a nice walk around Farewell Spit. Tftc!

From our holiday in New Zealand after å friends wedding at Anatoki Salmon farms.
As the Cyclone Gita destrøyed our plans to do the Heaphey trail we needed to find another plave to explore. We choose to drive to the sand spit and haven't regret it. What a fantastic place`!

Great hiding spot which took some time to find because teh GPS did not cooperate Thanks for the cache MarMis.

~Ayorama~
Proud member of 'teamGalskap'.
Dutchy, soppelsker og ælvecacher.

I don't know where I'm going.
But I'm going.
Shall i go to the left , where nothing's right?
Or to the right , where nothing's left?
Are you coming with me?

Good hide. Thanks.

We were walking across the farmland to this one before 9am this beautiful sunny morning. There are a couple of traps not to far from the cache but they are very obvious. Spotted the cache as I turned around- nice hidey hole. We then went on to the beach where the eco tour buses had just arrived. Luckily they didn’t stay long so there was just us and one large seal on the beach!! Thanks.

Found it during a cycle touring trip on the top of the south island. My first cache for this year

My first find in 2018! Happy new year. TFTC.

Found it during our holiday in NZ

Some seals were blocking the way to fossil point, but we did find the cache.

Little meerkat found it with two helpers after we built a sandyman at the beach!!!
Tftc

I had decided to have a walk along the Spit today hopefully signing off a couple of caches.

This was the first I encountered. It took a couple of minutes to locate it. I might have been a bit quicker if I hadn't been wearing my prescription sunglasses in this dark grove.

I removed the old damp logsheets and replaced it with a waterproof one. Sorry, I didn't have a replacment container as the lid came off in my hands.

Cheers for the cache.

I had to search for a while but in the end I found it thanks for showing this lovely place!

On our walk at Farwell Spit we found this one. Tftc Sprunghörnchen

Paper very wet . I wrote an à tissue .
Nice place

The family Tognisserne ( can be translated into Train Pixies ) is on vacation from Denmark to New Zealand.

Drive from Cable Bay to Farewell Spit in hope of seeing some seels ... howewer they were not in the neighbourhood this day. Found this cache though.

Thanks for the cache.

Nice to get out of the sun to find this cache thanks!

Easy find on the way back to the car park. Container's a bit rusty but logbook seems dry.
TFTC!

Found it during our Walk around the Faerwell Spit!
TFTC

Found it today on a lovely sunny day. We did the longer walk from the visitor centre out to the spit and back via the beach to the Fossil Point - in total 13 km. It was fabulous! Unfortunately no seals at the beach today. We met one at this place 14 years ago but today he was out The cache is a little bit rusty but in a good condition. The new log sheet is still dry. There was a log from a fellow geocacher from today but unfortunately we didn't meet him.
TFNC! C&M alias DRQN

Hey .....it is my first cache in Puponga, we found the cache quick. Thanks for your cache all the best Diddyhonda

On Wed 7th the brand new Oregon 700 hiccuped and lost all cache details from the Takaka PQ. Still showed icons with cache names- but no details. So a trip to the Takaka internet cafe to note down the directions and hints for a handful of essential Takaka caches... this was one of them. We did the easy loop track to get a taste of both the inner and outer farewell spit beaches, found fossils at Fossil Point, then found this cache to complete the loop. Tin is rusty - this is a very wet area.

This weekend us capperz are over the hill to Golden Bay and celebrating. It's our wedding anniversary on Friday followed by my 50th birthday on the Saturday. So we looked around for a decent place to go for the weekend and the potential of this beautiful area won out (this time). Only grabbed the one cache on the Friday night (there was much drizzly rain and poor visibility) trip over the hill(s) so there was much anticipation for what was next. Both the Saturday of my half-century milestone and the Sunday were bathed in golden sunshine and the temperature was perfect; neither too hot nor too cold.
After 'finding' he Earthcache further back we settled on this quick walk as a taster of the area. A nice pleasant stroll which took around an hour all-up and nice an steady. I had no luck on the way to the beach so settled on seeing the fossilized worm casts at the end of the beach near that tell-tale smell of nearby seal. On the walk back we spotted the seal swimming in the sea to, a bonus. Had another look whilst passing and spotted the cache hidden away. Replaced the sludge paper with a clean sheet of paper and replaced as found
T F T C MarMis

Quick find, but the logbook is very wet. TFTC

#1509 15:10

Found with no problem, very nice surroundings. What a wonderful place!
We did all the reserve cirquit that was amazing. "Ecobus" tours, going almost into the sea, were kind of bad joke...

Thank you for the cache and greetings from two Czechs!

This one took a while. Log is very wet. Dried it out as best I could. Thanks for placing the cache.

We spent 4 incredibly wonderful weeks in New Zealand for vacation and
had a lot of fun to discover all the marvels of this country.
Day 20 - on a cloudy and windy day we went to the Pupu Springs, a group of large and crystal clear springs, sacred to the Maori people before going to Farewell Spit.
At this narrow sand spit we had a pleasant walk over hills to the beach - miles of sand as far the eye can see!
We finished off with a coffee and a delicious muffin at the café.
Besides we still found time for geocaching and picked up quite a few caches on our way.
This was one of them!

TFTC,
Stadibast

From 19th February to 20th March Stadibast and I visited New Zealand. Half of the time we made a trip around the North-Island. After a short stay in Auckland we went to: Bay of Islands, Cape Reinga, Rotorua and the Wai-o-Tapu-Thermal Wonderland, the great Taupo-lake… We made a Rafting Tour in the Waitomo-Glowworm-caves or hiked the Tongariro–Alpine-Crossing and, and…
In the second part of our holidays we visited the south island, hiked in the Abel-Tasman-Reserve , went to the Marlborough-Sounds, the Golden Bay, the Oparara-Arch, the Franz-Josef- and Fox-Glaciers, had a great sight on Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman, relaxed at the Wanaka- and Hawea-Lakes,….
New Zealand is a very amazing country and with exceptional natural sites. We are very impressed of these great nature monuments and sights and we are happy that we met so much friendly and helpful people.
Nearby Farewell-Spit we passed this place.
Greetings from Germany.
TFTC
black_dog2402

Thanks for this cache,
its a very nice place.

TFTC!

Beautiful place and a nice walk around, TFTC

Nice shady location on a hot day. Nice easy walk to get here.
TFTC

In New Zealand for 4 weeks. Travel the South Island with our campervan. Of course, we have seen many great places and met nice people.
This cache we have found.

Wöty & AdrenaLina

#2585

Beautiful beach, well worth the stroll.

On holiday in New Zealand for 4 weeks & staying with my family in Lyttelton

TVM4TC

Went for a good long walk and seen the fossils and a lot of the spit. Tftc

Found this cache during visiting Farewell Split. We began our walk on the east side of the split and came after a short walk through farm land on the west side - wow...what a nice place! Thank you for hiding a cache on this great place!

Hard walk along the beach with a head wind and sand blowing into our face tftc

Went anticlockwise around this track. Tail wind on inside of spit and then a nasty nasty head wind up outside of spit beach. So much sand in the face. Went to look at 'fossils' and was a bit of a let down after the nasty walk we did. But cache was found. Tftc

We were lucky to find this, the GPS was aiming us acrosss the track but widening the search did the trick. We loved the beach here and found a few exposed fossils in some of the very interesting looking rocks down on the beach. It is about as far as you can get from my wild and windswept cache down the other end of the island.
Cheers and thanks,
S.t.

Spring holidays in Golden Bay!

Low tide, so we found more than fossils... the rock pools were a treasure of orange starfish and crayfish! A wonderful adventure with the kids!

Mum for the find (#33 this trip)

TFTC MarMis!

Found with Kiwimykl, refer to his log for details.

TFTC MarMis

NZDi and I have been planning a long weekend in Golden Bay for a month or so and today these plans came into fruition. Of course a long weekend out of town would not be complete without the odd cache thrown in and so a few caches were planned along the way. The weather back in Blenheim had been crap all week and the forecast for the weekend was not that flash either, however as soon as we got across the Whangamoa's we could see this part of the country was bathed in sunshine.

This is day two of our Golden Bay geocaching weekend, and todays efforts are concentrated on the caches around Wharariki, Cape Farewell and Farewell Spit. After getting Wharariki Walk we looked for other nearby caches that I had seen when planning this trip. It looks like I didn't set my radius far enough when creating my pocket query and the search missed four caches at Wharariki, Cape Farewell and Pillar Point (although I didn't know this until I got back into cell phone reception). We decided to head back to Puponga where we last had reception so we could save the missing caches on my mobile app and picked up this one along the way.

Getting the cache involved a lengthy walk through paddocks of frolicking lambs, then a short climb over the hill down to the beach. The search for the cache took a little longer than expected, but eventually the cache was found in a clever little hide.

TFTC MarMis

This entry was edited by Kiwimykl on Saturday, 26 September 2015 at 07:27:34 UTC.

After doing the Abel Tasman Track we drove up to Farewell Spit and I found this one. Tftc!

After a great explore of the beach this was a quick find on our walk back to the car

The day started rainy, but we went to Fossils Beach and on the Farewell Spit! It was a great experience with wind and rain! Later the sun was shining!

Thank you for the cache!

Caching with sulibats. Tftc

Quick find, and the beach is definitely worth the walk. TFTC.

I really enjoy spending time in New Zealand, I just love it here. Its nature, people and adventures I am passing through. Awesome place, thank you very much for introducing to myself and for the cache itself Sorry for late logging, I have some problems with internet access during travelling.

Thanks for the Cache at this beautiful spot!!

Found it during my trip from south of South Island to north of South Island.
Thanks for this cache!:)
Greetings from Czech

As we neared the end of our circuit of the spit, after a pleasant walk back along the beach, it didn't take too long to find this slightly sneakily hidden cache. We noted that MarMis had gone the opposite way before applying the hint. TFTC

Walked over from the car park and did the round trip been a bit of damage with the pine trees since my last trip over here, the water on the Cook Strait side is so clean and clear compared to the other side.

After finding "Sandspit Walk Boundary" we crossed the Farewell Spit dunes to the North coast and walked to this cache. Here we had to search for a while, before Pia suddenly found the box.

Thanks for the cache.

On our New Zealand trip from north to south.
It was a great experience to get to know New Zealand.
Thanks for the Cache.. Cheers from Switzerland

On our travelling in New Zealand we visit these cache. Thanks and cheers from Switzerland

Attempted this on way down to the beach but as the coordinates seemed to be inaccurate combined with the massive amounts of spiderswebs we decided to give up on this one. The constant stream of muggle didn't help.

We had to search here for a while before going back to the car park.
TFTC,
Team ERw2 - Eva and Robert F. - We 2 (2512)

After the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk we wanted a tramping free day. However, we did the Beach Walk at Farewall Splite and it was awesome. Thanks for placing the cache there.

it was a pleasure to visit this geocache with bubblezone during our long trip.
many thanks to the owner!

the fossil rocks were recommended by locals, so we hiked out there, through herds of sheep and cows. on the beach we found the rocks but no fossils. should they still be there? equally difficult it was to find the cache. it is SEVEN metres off and was well hidden behind spider webs. brrrr!

At Farewell Spit for the day.
Despite the grizzling I decided to walk to the Fossil Point and grab this one. Nice walk through the field. Was happy to reach the beach, magic place I don't know why, and then find the cache.

#163 and #125 in NZ

TFTC

Well that was a decent walk but it was a great day with little wind and we found the cache so all good.

A quick find once at GZ. Hint was helpful once we found it. TFTC!

Thanks for the cache. It was nice place to visit.

Found it

Bei unserm Neuseeland Urlaub auch hier vorbei gekommen... Gesucht und gefunden! Tolle Gegend hier...!!!
Danke fürs verstecken und herführen!

tftc

Left side it is when going to the beach

After having a coffee and a bite to eat at the café we set off to do the walk to Fossil Point and from there along Ocean Beach as far as the boundary of the allowed area before crossing the Spit to the Inner Beach and then back to the car park, around 12 kms in all. At GZ I had a little bit of trouble searching about in the vicinity of GZ looking for something that might be concealing the cache. Using the hint didn't initially help me either. Eventually persistence paid off, though Mrs B reckoned I had by then exceeded our 'if we can't find it in 5 minutes we move on' rule that is used when we are on our longer walks that just happen to have a Geocache somewhere along the route (almost all of them Anyway, another smiley this time and TFTC.

A great path through the fields and a fantastic deserted beach at the end! TFTC

Found it. Really beautiful place, and a nice walk to get there...
Thanks!