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Published: November 25th 2008
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Nelson 7th November
Have just realised I'm leaving for India in a few hours time and had only just arrived in New Zealand as far as the blog was concerned.....
I flew from Taupo to Wellington and then onto Nelson without any problems. It's really easy flying internally in New Zealand as you only need to pitch up half an hour before take off and on the smaller, 18 seater planes it's the co-pilot who checks your ticket and welcomes you on board. The cockpit curtain stays open so you can see the pilots chatting about what they're doing at the weekend etc.
The shuttle driver was very friendly and took me on an impromptu tour of Nelson before dropping me off at The Baywick. The Canadian/Kiwi hosts were very friendly and the lady is very involved in WOW - the World of Wearable Art - which has a brilliant museum housing fantastic displays of all sorts of weird and wonderful clothing from their annual fashion shows. These have now moved to Wellington but you can see videos of past shows at the museum.
I climbed the local hill which has a plaque showing where the centre
of New Zealand is so now I've just got Stewart Island in the south to go and I've covered it all! Another time...
Ged's friend Judy picked me up in the evening and took me to her house for a meal and to meet her husband Tim and son Matthew/Max. Driving along the shore with mountains in the background and looking out of their window at the nearby hills it wasn't hard to work out why they didn't feel any urge to return to England. It was great to spend time with them and also when Judy did the round trip to pick me up and take me to the Abel Tasman park for the day. Initially I was a bit shocked at the thought of doing a 5 hour walk - but then realised that's what I would be doing on the Routeburn and Annapurna treks so it would be good to get some training in. Judy is 'well fit' and does far more exercise than me, (not difficult at the moment), so I got to push myself a bit and survived. Despite the weather, (it was raining until we got out of the water taxi and then
Abel Tasman Estuary
The tides go out a long way. overcast for the rest of the time), the scenery was stunning and set off really well by the tropical looking greenery. We walked from Tonga Bay to Anchorage and were then picked up again by the taxi and returned to Kaiteriteri. I'd love to go back and walk more of the track one day.
Nelson is quite famous for its arts and crafts and I pottered about several workshops and also went to the Saturday market which was great.
10th November
I picked up a car today - a Colt Mitsubishi - and it was great to feel I had the freedom of the road once more. After a stop at the WOW museum I set off in the pouring rain along winding mountain roads but the weather cleared up as I hit the coast and I had a beautiful run down to Kaikoura. Before I left on my travels, we'd had a big debate - scenery or wildlife. For me it's scenery every time but I was persuaded that I really had to do the whale watching in Kaikoura and I'm glad I did. It's something else to watch a sperm whale in it's own habitat,
particularly when it takes the final deep breath before flicking it's tail and disappearing for half an hour before resurfacing again. The Dusky dolphins were great fun too as they swam alongside the boat and leapt into the air. We also saw blue sharks and an albatross.
Kaikoura is special because the ocean floor shelves away steeply - going from 100m to 2000m very quickly. Apparently you could stand six Sky Towers (328m I think), on top of each other and still not see them. This encourages a whole range of wildlife to the area that would not normally be seen so close to the shore. I have some great videos but it's taking eons just to upload photos here so I'll have to save them for another time....
I was also really lucky that it was a perfect day and very calm.
After the whale watch I went along to the seal colony at the end of the peninsula where you can usually get really close up to the seals. The colours were stunning and the antics of the seals good fun. It was great to sit at a roadside stall in the sunshine afterwards where
they sold crayfish and scallops and where I met up with others from the whale watch and a lady I kept bumping into who was on her way to pick up her daughter from university. It was really hard to pull myself away from Kaikoura on such a lovely day but finally I hit the road and headed for Christchurch.....
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