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Published: December 7th 2010
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Heading South …
Day 7 - Rotorua to Napier
This morning it was Diana’s turn for a run around Blue Lake whilst P and the children got down to some homework and some hot chocolate. Rotorua to Napier took us about three hours in the Spaceship, not including a brief stop at Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. Very smelly wafts, fantastic coloured deposits around the rim of very hot pools and bubbly, ploppy mud … W’s strong sense of smell had him report loudly ‘Ughh … I’d rather be shopping (!) than be here!’
A short drive took us to the Lady Knox Geyser … really interesting geomorphology which was lost on W. I think that all he learned was that if you drop some soap into hot water you might get an explosive release of gases – a great help in our pursuit of personal hygiene!. Hopefully the blog will carry the video we took … really quite impressive.
The journey south to Taupo was through wooded valleys, punctuated by puffs of sulphural vapours. A left-turn at Taupo had us on the long run to Napier across endless miles of forestry plantations (140km between gas stations). A very hot and long drive
across the plateau ended as we descended the hairpin bends to the cooler air of the coast of Hawke’s Bay. Immediately, pine trees were supplanted by fruit trees of all varieties (apples, citrus, tangelos) and then the vineyards began …
I had chosen Napier as our stop south, rather than the more physical and volcanic hotspots of the west coast, due to its architecture. ‘Flattened by a famous earthquake early in the 20th century and rebuilt entirely in art deco style’ read the guidebook … umm, beautiful campsite and sunshine but the town failed to impress and obviously suffers from weekend binge drinking. P’s early morning walk to take some photos of the architecture saw him come across smashed-up cars, drunk teenagers asleep on the beach, vomit and associated debris throughout the town centre.
(We read on Monday, in Wellington, of a number of drug-related crimes and misdemeanours over the weekend in Napier!)
A little disillusioned by NZ perhaps, we spent the night (yes, all 4 of us) curled up in the back of the Spaceship watching ‘Australia’.
Day 8 - Napier to Wellington
Wow – huge drive! Mr Mercator has a lot to answer for … NZ and
GB might look the same size on a map but they aren’t!!! A glorious drive down the east coast of the N Island in boiling hot weather with a beautiful view of inland mountains clad with boiling-over cloud. Unfortunately, our journey took us over the mountains into a cloud bank that ran all the way into Wellington (our next stop). A short cool-off on the waterfront in Wellington (much more impressive than Auckland – sorry!) in the 30-knot onshore winds was what we all needed. A short trip back up into the mountains took us to the temporary home of the Tribe family in a beautiful valley. It was great to catch up with NZ’s newest immigrants and our old friends … and to have a shower and a sleep inside.
Good luck to Steve, Jane, Anna and Tom with all of those difficult decisions … homes, schools and which brand of Tim Tams to buy …
Day 9 – Wellington to Monueka (Abel Tasman NP)
TE PAPA IS THE BEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD!!!
I have never visited an archive that so accurately portrays and embodies the ethos and history of a place as this. ‘Our Place’ is
a stunning building on the wharf (sitting like some giant inhabited shell), full of spaces with clever use of interactive media, suspended antiquities, personal testimonies of both maoris/settlers and a stunning collection of fauna and habitats of these most beautiful and diverse islands. And it was free to get in! Do you know what … it was one of the most calming places I have visited and left us all wanting more … what else could you ask for from a museum (no dust in sight, unlike NY!)
Our Interislander crossing was fairly smooth despite the winds and the sail up the Marlborough Sounds was stunning. We were taken by the story of Pelorus Jack, a dolphin in the early 20th C renowned (and, perhaps more importantly, protected) for following the ferry back and fore between Wellington and Picton for a number of years. Unfortuntately, his descendants were a no-show today …
Our drive along the Queen Charlotte Sound and then inland via Nelson took a lot longer than anticipated but the verdant mountains dropping to deep-blue seascapes, punctuated by deserted, golden sands convinced us that we had arrived in the NZ we had all dreamed of. The weather was
glorious and promised a beautiful day kayaking in the Abel Tasman NP tomorrow … couldn’t sleep with excitement!
Day 10 – Boat trip/walk in Abel Tasman NP
RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It has only rained two days in the last sixty here … including today!
Early depression and discomfort (Spaceships are not meant to cope with downpours!) abated we drove up the coast to Kaiteriteri … a beautiful beach with a deep turquoise lagoon behind. ALL Kayak trips had been suspended by the time we arrived such was the sea-state … P had been looking forward to this as a highlight of the trip for 6 months! A quick rethink and we were on the water-taxi to Onetahuti beach bound for a two-hour walk through the pristine rainforest back to Bark Bay and our pickup. Wow! Stormy seas and a rigid, short hull made for a really exciting trip (very bouncy) past the views of Split-Apple Rock and the seal colony of Tonga Island where we were fortunate enough to see the first new-born seal pups of the season and some tiny penguins (Little Blue). We were struck (again) by the diversity of the shells and bird-life on our walk back
to the pick-up and this was certainly a walk none of us minded doing in the rain.
Normally, of course, we would have been walking through steaming sub-tropical rainforest and scampering over sun-baked sands (checkout Google images!) … the rain didn’t detract from the beauty and isolation for me. Of course, a spell in the hot-tub back at the camp-site probably helped to ease the chill and make everything seem a little less like Cornwall in October!
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Edmund
non-member comment
COOL
nice guys, so soooo nice.