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Published: December 17th 2005
We only have five days left!! I can hardly believe it's almost over! We are now on the North Island of New Zealand. We took a ferry ride from the south and through the Marlbourough Sounds, it was a very scenice boat ride to say the least. Then we did a one way transfer rental car from Wellington to Auckland which is about an 8-9 hour drive so here we are. Tomorrow we are heading out to Waiheke Island for our last 4 nights here and then home we go.
I think last time I left off at the Franz Josef Glacier. From there we headed north up the west coast and stopped over in a town called Punakaiki. If you haven't noticed already, many of the towns in New Zealand seem pretty foreign and hard to read, spell and say. I believe they are of the Maori origin, the native people of New Zealand, so that explains the different words etc. Anyways, in Punakaiki are the pancake rocks and blowholes. When the tide is high the waves are pushed up through the blowholes and is forced through the small blowholes and resembles a tea kettle full of boiling water, pretty cool. The hostel we stayed at was nestled in the middle of the rainforest and a 10 minute walk away from the thundering crashing waves, a beautful area to watch the sunset.
Our next destination was further north to a town called Motueka which is 13km south of the Abel Tasman National Park. There is world class kayaking so of course we thought we better go check it out and spend a day kayaking. Mary opted to hike one of the lovely walks The Abel Tasman Park offers, so that left Justin myself and my mom to tackle the waters of the Park with our guided kayak tour. The first island we paddled around had a seal colony living there and boy you should have heard the crazy noises they were making! Sometimes it was a cross between a horse and a seal or just a plain old seal moan. Of course this is mating season so maybe that can explain some of the wild noises we were hearing?! Some of the seals came as close as a foot to our kayaks and were very playful in the water. We were also lucky enough to spot a couple of newborn pups that were absolutely adorable. The rest of the kayak trip was spent following the coastline (We even spotted a couple penguins) until we reached our destination where the water taxi picked us up and dropped us back at Marahau where we were then transferred by car back to Motueka. Funniest thing when the water taxi arrived at Marahau, the tide was low and there was a 1.6km difference of where the water came up to on the shore, sooo to get around the low water levels tractors come out and tow the water taxis onto land! It was pretty funny seeing heaps of tractors docking all these water taxi boats and a couple of the boats were fully loaded with people geared up with their life jackets on and away they went down the tar road still in the boat with their life jackets on. hehe
Then we headed east towards Picton and dropped Mary off so she could go visit a couple of friends in the North Island she had travelled with years back. The rest of us drove to Punga Cove which is in Marlborough Sounds and relaxed there for 2 days. If an aerial picture was taken of the road we drove to get out to this remote hostel, you would seriously guess it was a go-cart track, not a road! And it went for 70km (50 miles)! Definately not for the weak stomach motion sickness person. However, the peaceful retreat we arrived at was well worth the drive. It was in the middle of the Marlborough Sounds and located pretty much on the water. The sounds looked like groups of mini-mountains/rolling hills and it was so quiet and peaceful you couldn't help but be relaxed. We were able to go kayaking here as well. There also seemed to be an abundant amount of sea creatures in the area. We found pretty big crabs that I swear chased you right out of the water (they are fast little buggers!), we found a pretty big starfish, jellyfish, mini hermit crabs and a few other things. I think I also forgot to right about the starry sky here. If you get a clear night, the starts literally twinkle and on a good night you can see the Milky Way stretching across the sky, it is just lovely.
That's about it for now. Don't forget to drop us a message, it's fun to hear what everyone is up to!
Take Care...Happy Holidays!
Beth and Justin
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Shanna and Jay
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Sounds great!
Can't wait to hopefully see you guys in person soon! It sounds like you've been having an amazing time and it's fun to live vicariously through you while the high temp today was 5 degrees. Miss you guys!!