Seven kilometres out of Takaka in Golden Bay, along Pupu Valley and Te Waikoropupū Springs roads, sits one of the purest bodies of water on the planet — and it costs nothing to see.

Te Waikoropupū Springs (locals just say “Pupu Springs”) push out roughly 14,000 litres of cold, 11.7°C water every second, drawn up through the Wharepapa Arthur Marble Aquifer from a catchment reaching back into Kahurangi National Park. When measured in 1993, horizontal visibility hit 63 metres — about as close to optically pure water as has ever been recorded from a karst spring anywhere in the world.

Leave the car at the Springs Road car park and follow the easy, fully accessible 705-metre loop track (allow 30–45 minutes) through native bush to a viewing platform over the main spring, where the sand on the bottom seems to boil and dance from the upward pressure of the water. Interpretation panels along the way explain why you can look but not touch.

That’s not just a suggestion — it’s the law. Te Waikoropupū is wāhi tapu and a taonga to Māori, associated with the taniwha Huriawa, and since a Water Conservation Order took effect in October 2023 the springs carry the highest legal protection New Zealand water can have. Swimming, wading, fishing, dogs and even filling a water bottle are all off-limits, both to respect that status and to keep invasive algae out of one of the last untouched aquifers in the country.

Gold miners cleared much of the surrounding forest to build water races between the 1830s and around 1910, so today’s regenerating bush is younger than it looks — one more reason to stick to the boardwalk and let the place keep recovering.

Photos: spentrails (CC BY 2.0), Oyvind1979 (Public Domain), Justin Fail (CC BY-SA 2.0), low cloud (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons.