The day started with beautiful blue skies, this was another travel day so we packed and headed out. As I mentioned before, SH1 in South Island hugs the coast for the first hour. We stopped the car at Oahu and were treated to more fur seals lounging around and some of the birds nesting on one of the rocks. And then the clouds came in and it poured with rain, the temperature also dropped. There is a reason that Crowded House sing “Four seasons in one day”
The weather calmed down a little and we drove up and over the mountain ranges over to Nelson, with a quick stop in Blenheim at one of the wineries where we had a coffee and Rob had his obligatory cake. We actually stayed on the outskirts in a place called Tahunanui. Went out to get groceries 2 miles up the road and the local Police were out in force, stopping every car to breathalyze the drivers, 2.30 in the afternoon! Good job we had coffee at the winery. Luckily there was a good pub/restaurant just down the road so we did not get too wet going out for dinner.
Friday was another really lovely blue sky day, we had already planned that we were going to Hike at Abel Tasman and the forward forecast had predicted light rain for the morning so we were really pleased they were wrong. It was a great 10 mile walk in total, skirting the cliffs around the bays. We were treated to the beauty of the rain forest like trees and plants and then sweeping views of some of the bays. The local Weka are clearly not to bothered about the humans walking by, although my best view was actually the small video clip that I took. Rob edited it for me and the link is below. We ate lunch down on the beach at Akersten bay. While we taking some photos, a cheeky Weka tried to steal Rob’s banana out of his back pack.
On the way back we drove around to take a short walk down the the beach to take pictures of Split Apple rock. Rob was more impressed than I was, but I was balancing the view of the rock with the crazy steep climb to and from the bay.
Saturday we drove out to Rabbit Island and walked the nine mile loop around the Island. It’s a mix of forest, river and beach. When we were on the beach side, I started to get upset as I thought we were seeing some beached whales but as we drew closer you could see that they were not really whales but giant inflatables and they were having a volunteer training session to show people what to do in the event this really happened, Phew!!
On the way back, we stopped at the Classic Car museum, which in the past also had a wearable art display, but not today. Given that my walk around a bunch of cars took less than 10 minutes, I was grateful there was a cafe there so I could go and sit and give Rob more time to enjoy them.
