My Birthday fell just after Labour Day Weekend this year. As we get a few days off, we decided to take a road trip to the South Island for an adventure.
FRIDAY
Leaving work and heading straight for the ferry terminal, we were both sat in the car excited to be going on holiday and having an adventure 🙂 The crossing was fairly bad; the waves were up to 3m in some places! I was beginning to feel a bit rough when we got into the Queen Charlotte Sounds, where thankfully the water calmed down, so it was all okay. Arriving in Picton, when we got back into the car, James wrapped me up in a blanket, so I was lovely and warm as we drove onwards towards Nelson!
SATURDAY
The next morning, we got up and took a walk into the city centre to see the market. It was very pleasant; we had a little walk around the museum as well as getting a bite to eat in the sunshine before we decided that we should probably start driving up towards Golden Bay, where we wanted to camp for the night!
Nelson is a really pretty town (or is it a city?).
We headed up towards Mapua, a recommendation from a friend at work. It was lovely!
It’s a cute little port that has had all of the boat sheds turned into quirky cafes and restaurants. We took a walk around and then visited the Golden Bear brewery, a little bar where you can buy bottles of their beer, brewed on site, for only a few dollars.
The weather was gorgeous, which made a nice change from windy Wellington! I forget that without the wind, it can be very pleasant.
From Mapua, we drove up the coast a bit further, stopping in Motueka for a short leg stretch and a few attempts at skimming stones. I failed miserably!
James, however, aced the skimming!
Next on the tiki-tour was Kaiteriteri, where the sun made an appearance again! We got out to stretch our legs and have a short wander. Being cooped up in the car is fine but I needed a break from it.
Later on in the day we reached Tutukaka Hill, where James had a quick look at a possible bouldering area that we could have a go at over the next day or so. It was lovely and warm and we walked up through a pretty green path and out onto a shaded river area with perfect bouldering area over the river.
Next on the agenda was a short hike. As we drove up to the car park we saw a beautiful Peacock! It was really bright and was making a loud noise that sounded like a cat!
After getting some photos of it, we started on our hike, over the rolling green hills and across to a beach with huge sand dunes. Apparently there are sometimes seals, however, we didn’t get a chance to see any, but thats okay, I enjoyed the walk nevertheless! It was interesting to see the scenery go from bright green rolling hills to sandy dunes with patchy grasses.
Our final journey of the day was to our campsite for the night; Totaranui DoC campsite. It’s very basic, with toilet blocks with only loos and cold water showers. Brrrr! We set up our tent and pretty much went straight to bed. It was dark and eerie, but there were a lot of people there, so it wasn’t too scary.
SUNDAY
When I woke up in the morning, the angle of the sun was at just the right place to sort of magnify everything outside, therefore it made the Pukeko running around outside seem huge, like Moa! We went for a lovely morning stroll and James decided to take a dip…it was little too cold for me though.
Onwards and towards our next campsite; The Pohara Beach Top Ten Holiday Park. We put up our tent, showered and then drove on to a short hike up to a waterfall. Very pleasant.
The next leg of the trip was towards a bubbling spring lake; Te Waikoropupu Springs.
Monday
James had found an interesting looking cave on the internet; Rawhiti Cave…so we decided to go and check it out. Most of the walk was easy and relatively flat, however, the end five minutes or so were crazy steep, it felt like a real workout! It used to be open for tours in the 1930’s and people used to hike up to it and then sit and have a cup of tea. How quaint. I think I could have done with a tea!
The inside of the cave was pretty cool, but their signage said not to spend too long for fear of too many footsteps ruining the cave, or whats left of it.
James really wanted to take me to a strange walk through a valley-ish formation of rocks, so this was next on our list. It was a fairly short walk, but the views from the viewpoint were really great…and the rocks were a bit weird!
We saw alpaca!
We decided to go back and have brunch at Mapua, the place we stopped at on the way to Nelson. It was lovely! I had poached eggs and they were impressive. And the sun was out, which is always lovely. So despite spending most of the day in the car, the brunch and sunshine made up for it 😊
Overall, an amazing weekend in the sunshine having an adventure.
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