Golden Bay - paradise and sandflies

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We had a couple of spare days before starting our latest death march, the Heaphy Track, so we decided to head for paradise, Golden Bay located in the northwestern corner of the South Island. Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, was the first person to visit the area in 1642 and due to a miscommunication with the Maoris who were actually cannibals and coming to eat rather than greet his men, he named the place Murder's Bay. More recently it was changed to Golden Bay. The area is still beautiful no matter what it is called, but it is more appealing to visit Golden Bay and the property prices have shot up accordingly. Marketing, marketing marketing...
Nelson is the regional city of Golden Bay and it is charming with a laidback small town feel. It boasts lots of progressive shops like fair trade, organic, etc. plus the region is famous for its wine, beer and apples. The hops for beer that are grown here are exported around the world to breweries like Coors in Colorado... I think that 80% of the hops come from this region. Nelson is also the sunniest place in NZ, but it rained for the most part. However, its personal claim to fame for me is a cafe named Lambrettas which serves the most amazing food... Blake ate there 5 days in a row while I wasn't far behind with 4 days. I highly recommend it.
We drove up to Takaka, a small town of 1200, that is the regional center for the ag industry. It feels like Arcata, CA where I attended Humboldt State U. for a year. It is very progressive with communes nearby and we even saw "Jesus" riding down the street on a moped, he had a long grey beard and baggy linen clothing. He must have thought that he was in heaven and we completely agree. While we were in Golden Bay we drove to the top of the South Island at Cape Farewell where there are amazing viewings of the aquamarine surf pounding against the limestone cliffs that have been smoothed out over time. We saw a fur seal gliding in the surf. Close by is a world class beach, Whariariki Beach, a German magazine even voted it among the top 10 best beaches period. These lists are quite subjective, but the beach was nice with some really cool limestone arched sea stacks out in the surf. It was low tide and there as a dazzling array of intertidal life including a dead octopus, sea anenomes that looked blood red, limpets and two fur seal pups that had been trapped in a tide pool and who were happily frolicking about. They were charming! There were adults nearby on rocks looking like Japanese sumo wrestlers, just boring to look at since at most they may twitch an eye every hour. The Cape and beach are part of a farm park and nearby the parking lot was a farmer with several dogs herding his flock. It is amazing how high tech our lives have become yet certain practices like using dogs to herd sheep are so low tech but still extremely effective. Those sheep didn't know what even hit them as the dogs neatly herded he flock into a pen. Alas we drove back to Nelson to prepare for the Heaphy Track, 82 km.

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