Scenes from Nelson (and Mapua)
Nelson lies on the central northern coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It is supposed to be the sunniest place in all of New Zealand. And it was for our first day, providing the perfect backdrop to relaxing next to our campervan, drinking our newly acquired limited edition Sprig & Fern Harvest Pilsner and chopping up fresh veggies from Nelson’s Wednesday farmers market for salsa. Day two, the rain started (and pretty much didn’t let up for the rest of our days in New Zealand, save for a brief reprieve in Rotorua). Good thing Nelson is a quaint little town with historic old buildings housing shops and cafes. And furthermore that it lies in a hop growing region and has a thriving craft beer culture (like at the Free House, above. Craft beer in a church – we Pittsburghers can get on board with that). We forgave Nelson for its transgression in raining on us in the sunniest part of New Zealand.
By the way, if you are ever in New Zealand and you’re thirsty, you may want to check out some of the more notable beers we tried. It’s a hard job vetting beers but someone’s got to do it. New Zealand excels in hoppy pilsners and pales ales. We really liked Sprig & Fern’s Harvest Pilsner (from Nelson, see below); Harrington’s the Rogue Hop Organic Pilsner (from Christchurch, recommended by a neighbor Ohioan now living in Motueka); Emerson Organic Pilsner (from Dunedin); Townsend Old House ESB on cask (from Upper Moutere, near Nelson); and the Moa range of beers (from Marlborough).
At the Mapua harbor, a little town on the way from Motueka to Nelson
Also in Mapua
I.loved.this.beer. I say loved in the past tense because unless I happen to be in Nelson again in April, this one bottle we picked up from the brewery is it for me. The Sprig & Fern is a local brewery with over 20 craft beers. The Harvest Pilsner was released days before we arrived and they expected to sell out within the week. It was crammed full of local hops, brewed on the very day they were picked. The result is a hoppy, crisp pilsner with an aromatic fruity aroma - sort of like the sauvignon blanc of beers. I was in love; Sean thought it was good but had too many fruit notes for him.
Downtown Nelson, centered around the cathedral
Scenes from Abel Tasman National Park
It’s so easy your grandmother could do it, the guy at the Motueka Top 10 told me when I inquired about the most popular hike in Abel Tasman National Park. While a couple of lazy non-hikers like Sean and me managed the 5.4 mile hike from Bark Bay to Anchorage Bay without any troubles (save for a few grumbles along the lines of hills? no one told me there was going to hills!), I’m not sure I can picture my grandmother trucking along the trail (may she rest in peace). Perhaps his statement should have been qualified that it was so easy a New Zealand grandmother could do it, judging by the sweet 90-something couple we chatted with on a hiking trail in Arrowtown. But what do I know? We passed the 90 year olds in Arrowtown, but a 4-year-old girl kept smoking us on the trail at Abel Tasman.
Abel Tasman National Park, located on the South Island’s northeast coast, is New Zealand’s smallest national park but it is packed to the gills with beautiful unblemished coastline. There are no roads inside the park, so we took a water taxi along the coast to get to our hiking destination and were blessed with one of our few sunny days in New Zealand.
Scenes from Motueka and Golden Bay
Heading north finally brought some sun. We couldn’t drive there fast enough and wee ended up staying for three nights at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Motueka. The town itself was nothing to write home about, but we stayed for two reasons: (1) it was a good base to explore the gorgeousness in the surrounding areas, like the fantastic Golden Bay (above), and, more importantly, (2) I got a second chance at using a jumping pillow. The jumping pillow at the Top 10 in Greymouth comes highly recommended, so I was quite disappointed when the rains on the West Coast turned it into a big, slick accident waiting to happen. When we pulled into the Top 10 in Motueka and saw it too had a jumping pillow, well, we headed straight over.
We knew we were getting close to Motueka when roadside stalls started popping up. It was harvest time for apples, pears, and feijoas (strange fruit the Kiwis love) so we picked up a huge bag of apples for $2NZD. We also grabbed some beans at this roadside stall operating on the honor system.
Heading up and over Tasman Hill towards Golden Bay, you can see sheep, pastures, orchards, and sea for miles.
Our lunch spot in Golden Bay. As we were preparing lunch in our campervan, a woman came from one of the houses across the road from the beach carrying a tray. She brought it over to this bench and ate lunch in a way that made me think that this is part of her daily routine. I could get used to such a routine.
Golden Bay actually didn't look so golden, but it has miles of untouched sand covered with seashells.
Collingwood is the town at the end of the line unless you take a tour out to the split. We found homemade chocolate in Collingwood and that was good enough for us.
Te Waikoropupu Springs has some of the clearest fresh water in the world and is considered to be a sacred spot for the Maori, the native New Zealanders. They used to have ceremonies here for births, deaths, and leaving and returning of travelers.
Scenes from the West Coast
The West Coast of the South Island has miles of coastline along the wild Tasman Sea and mountain ranges galore, but it’s biggest claim to fame is that it is glacier country. Our days on the West Coast, like our trip to Milford Sound, were covered in fog. All the scenic drives were obscured and rain poured down for most of our time there. Thankfully, the clouds parted for one brief day, and that day coincided with our visit to the glaciers, allowing us to see what massive hulks of ice and snow they really are. New Zealand has not one, but two mammoth glaciers that are slowing advancing again away from the sea. You can climb on top of them on guided hikes, but we opted just to take the short unguided hikes to the terminal ice. Standing in front of the glaciers in the massive valleys they’ve carved out is a wild experience.
The rain obscured the snow capped peaks we were supposed to see in Jackson Bay, but the fish and chips at the Cray Pot was delicious!
Views of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman from Lake Matheson
Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman again, along with some bovine friends.
Fox Glacier; our view from lunch. It's not every day that you get to eat lunch in view of a glacier.
Hiking up to the terminal of Franz Josef Glacier (the same one in the big picture, above).
The weather really put a damper on the rest of the West Coast north of the glaciers. I braved the rain in Hokitika to take a picture of this museum. It is housed in a building that was formerly a library donated by Andrew Carnegie.
Putting the grey in Greymouth.
News from N Zed.
– Did you know that the rest of the world calls the letter “Z” zed? I didn’t, but it’s true.
– I’m sorry to report that we are not any better at mastering the New Zealand accent. Although it is in the same general family as the British/Irish/South African/Australian ones, the Kiwi one is definitely unique. I met an Australian woman doing laundry the other day and we got to chatting about accents and language. I mentioned that we’re learning that some of the words we use are American English (like apparently the letter z!) She replied, Honey, American English ain’t English. I refrained from replying, Honey, ain’t ain’t a word in any language.
– Speaking of laundry, doing laundry (in a machine!) every four days (coinciding with the number of underwear and socks we own) is pure decadence.
– Speaking of accents, on the radio the other day, the Kiwi radio host was making fun of quote, ridiculous British accents, end quote.
– Speaking of Britain, talk of the Royal Wedding was EVERYWHERE in New Zealand on Friday. (Yes, I watched. Yes, I loved her dress!)
– You knew it was coming, but I am over this campervan. Being hemmed in by the rain doesn’t help and we find ourselves venturing out to eat more and more despite the crazy prices. I swear the campervan is getting smaller. As I write this, winds and rain howl at our campground outside our campervan shaking it from side to side. We didn’t have power at the campground when we arrived but it came back on a few hours ago. Driving here today, the winds whipped everything sideways. Luckily, not our campervan, although it seemed like a distinct possibility at times. The tall roof is like a sail. Everywhere we go, we hear how the weather just took a turn for the worse or that it’s going to be an early winter. Except for two glorious days in Rotorua, it’s been nothing but buckets of rain since we got to the North Island.
– It’s May 1: twelve days until home and less than two days until we re-enter the United States. Insane.
– Except, really, it’s twelve or two plus one. In the most exciting news around these parts, we discovered that we’ll be time travelling on Tuesday and experiencing May 3 twice. Yesterday, we finally took a closer look at the crazy flight we booked back in January. At the time, it seemed like a good idea to add a Hawaii stopover in for super cheap prices. What we forgot about was the many legs of flying required to get those cheap prices. Going by the local time at each stop, we fly from Auckland to Fiji at around 1:00 on May 3. We then have an 8 hour layover, and take off again at 11:59 on May 3. We then land for an hour at Christmas Island (which apparently is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and luckily is not the Christmas Island over in the Indian Ocean) around 6:30 a.m. on May 4. Then, in the really mind blowing part, we fly for a couple of hours more to Hawaii, and land around 10:30 a.m. Except, it won’t be May 4 like we thought. Because we cross the international date line, it will be 10:30 a.m. on May 3. So that means we have 8 nights in Hawaii, not 7. An extra day in Hawaii? Awesome. Too bad we booked our interisland flight from Oahu to Kauai and rental car on Hotwire starting on May 4. Oops.