This weekend I got out of town with two coworkers for my first real weekend trip (since my attempt to go to the west coast didn't go so well.. ) Tina, Jason, and I decided to drive up to the Nelson area. Nelson is a city near the northern tip of the South Island. It's pretty far away, so most of the trip consisted of driving, and stopping for a hike in a few places.
We decided to drive up the east coast from Christchurch on Saturday morning, and our first stop was Kaikoura. Kaikoura is a beautiful, bright blue bay with a stunning background of snow capped mountains. It was hard to catch both in one picture but I tried.. A bunch of people in the office came up here the weekend before I got to New Zealand, and talked about how beautiful it was, so I was excited to see it. Definitely lived up to the hype.
About 20 km north of Kaikoura, there is a seal colony! We pulled over to see them, and saw (according to our guidebooks) 100 seals. I didn't count that many, but that's ok. On the other side of the highway was a trail that lead to the base of a waterfall where the seal pups play. It was incredible how close the seal pups came to people, but they were moving way too fast for a close up photo. One pup climbed up a hill next to the pool and was looking back at us. Others were playing together and jumping out of the water like flying fish. I didn't know seals did either of those things, but it was so fun to watch.
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| Pup coming up to see his friends |
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| If you look closely you can see a ton of seals. This is the little pool they all gather in. |
We got back in the car and drove north through wine country, to Blenheim. A group of coworkers are going to Blenheim next weekend, and I can't go because of other travel plans, so I wanted to check it out. We planned to stop and get lunch, but the downtown of Blenheim only had a McDonalds and a Burger King, so, disappointed in the town, we drove on.
Around 1:30 (left ChCh at 7 am) we finally got to Nelson! Nelson was beautiful! It was the cute coastal town I've been searching for. Jason and Tina had recently been to Queenstown and Dunedin (two other South Island cities) so they were not as shocked to see a nice place as I was, but it really made us all reflect on the current state of Christchurch. I was amazed to see a thriving downtown area, full of tourists and locals walking around. Christchurch's main tourist district was severely damaged during the earthquake, and many of the buildings in the downtown area have since been demolished. There was a long period after the quakes that the entire downtown was taped off and deemed unsafe for people to be walking in. There are very few tourists here these days, and even fewer locals walking around downtown. It's really sad to see the difference between current Christchurch and a place like Nelson, but yesterday I was just really happy to be in sunny, happy Nelson.
We didn't stay in Nelson too long though. After lunch and a bit of window shopping, we reserved our spots at a YHA hostel in Golden Bay and got on our way. We drove about 45 minutes to the Abel-Tasman National Park to do a day hike. The hike ended up to be a super simple 6k walk along the coast. The views were beautiful, but I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
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| GRASSROOTS GEAR! |
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| I really love that line of mountain in the distance. Makes the horizon so interesting |
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| Appletree Bay - Destination of the hike |
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| Low tide on our way back to the start |
We went back to the nearest town for dinner, and before heading out to Golden Bay, stopped at the grocery store. Tina had an inkling that where we were going would be pretty remote and wouldn't have any place for us to get breakfast in the morning, so we stocked up on snacks for our morning hike. Feeling pretty prepared, we set off on our over-a-giant-mountain-in-the-pitch-darkness drive. About 45 minutes in, we're nearing the top of the mountain, and Tina goes, "You know else we should've gotten in town? Some gas." A minute later, the low fuel light turned on. Well shoot. It is nearly pitch black and we have no idea how far it is until we get to the hostel and also no idea if there will be a gas station where we're going. Towns and gas stations are few and far between when you start traveling through the mountains. The GPS arrival estimate was also suspiciously getting later and later. We made it to the top of the mountain, relieved to save a little bit of gas on the way down, and decide there's nothing we can do, except hopefully get to the hostel and get help. That's when we realized.. we told the hostel that would be there between 8 and 9 pm. They close at 7, so we needed to call and tell them if we will be later. We call repeatedly (once we finally get to an area with cell phone service) and get no answer. It's already 9:15, the fuel light it still on, and we have 15 minutes to go.
You could cut the tension in our car with a knife. We each admitted that we were all equally to blame for not checking the gas level ahead of time, but that didn't help the fact that no one thought we were going to make it. And worse than that, we really thought we were going to be shut out of the hostel and have to sleep in the car. Three of us in our Toyota Corolla did not see very comfortable. Thank God, I bought those Kit Kats at the grocery store ;)
Around 9:40 we got to the hostel, and shockingly someone was there to let us in. Exhausted, we got ready for bed, and I immediately fell asleep. The next morning, we found a gas station and were on our way for our next hike. Thank goodness.
We drove out to Cape Farewell, the northern-most point on the South Island and hiked out to Wharariki Beach. The beach had the smoothest, whitest sand I've ever seen. And it was deep. My shoes sunk nearly six inches in to the sand at some parts of the beach. Refreshed and restored, by making some of the first footprints on this powder-fresh sand, I felt so much better about our trek.
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| Northern-most point on the South Island |
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| I liked this sign better than the one that said "Parents keep your small childen by your side at all times due to strong wind gusts along unfenced cliff faces" |
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| Ah. So worth the hike. |
So we almost ran out of gas, on a mountain, in the dark, without cell phone service, and we almost got locked out of the hostel. But we didn't. And once again I made it home safely and so ready for bed.
Other trip highlights:
- We had lots of car time, so we found some time to listen to Taylor Swift's new album all the way through, twice. Well done, Taylor.
- Great wildlife as always. We watched sheep being herded on the hilltop walk to the beach, and watched the dogs herd a runaway cow back in to his pasture after that. Reminded me of Lily-baby. I assumed this dog was her distant cousin, the New Zealand sheep dog.
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