Top of the South Island

My twin sister Cici was supposed to arrive from Portland, Oregon on December 20, but instead she went just about everywhere else. Her Virgin Australia flight left Los Angeles late and was diverted to Honolulu because of a sick crewmember. She was able to call her husband from there, and he called us, so we could track her flights after that. Since the crew had now worked past their limit, the plane had to divert to Fiji to pick up a new crew. Of course, there was no opportunity to enjoy either of those locales. Finally, Cici got to Sydney, but it was too late for the connection to Auckland, so they flew her to Christchurch instead. She at least got a little rest in a motel. In the morning, she was able to change her Air New Zealand flight so she came straight to Wellington a little before noon, only 15 hours late. We took her for a walking tour around Wellington, dinner at a Turkish restaurant, and some Irish music afterwards.

The next day, Tuesday December 22, we got on the ferry for four days on the South Island. The weather was good, so we sat outside most of the trip. I do not remember this trip well from 20 years ago, but the passage through the Tory Strait in Marlborough Sound to Picton is quite spectacular. It is a surprisingly narrow channel. In Picton we picked up a rental car and proceeded over hills and along different bays to Nelson on the Tasman Bay. Since Ron had stayed there a couple of months ago, he took us on a walking tour, and we stocked up on groceries for Christmas. Our motel was in Motueka, a smaller town closer to Abel Tasman National Park.

The next day was our big day for a boat tour around the Park. The boat leaves from a small marina and travels along the coast, dropping off and picking up people from various designated beaches. Rather than getting on the boat right away, we parked at the entrance of the park and walked about 45 minutes to the first pick up point. We did this in order not to feel too limited by a timetable of pickups. The boat was quite full when we got on, but gradually emptied as we went along. The bay is wide, the coast is lovely, the weather was great. We cruised by one island that is a seal nursery. As usual, it took awhile to see the seals because they look like brown rocks when they are sleeping. I learnt that the females stay around all year, because they are pregnant for about 11 months and taking care of new pups, and the males only show up for about 3 months during the mating season. We went all the way to the top of the run and then most of the return trip, and got off at the second-to-last stop, Anchorage Bay.

We ate lunch in the shade of a small cliff at the end of the beach. Carved separately into the cliff were the names of two of our nieces, Iris and Zoe, which we thought was a neat coincidence. The Iris name included the dates 1897 – 1983, so it might have been there 25 years. Wading around the cliff, I found that there was a darling little cove with a big rock with a split arch in it. It reminded me of the Cathedral Coast area up in the Coromandel. It was a nice day for wading, but not warm enough to feel like swimming. After lunch, we started our hike out of the Park, more than 7 miles, or about 4 hours. The first bit was uphill to get around the headland, but after that the trail was quite moderate, and we had good views. The forest was mostly coastal scrub rather than tall trees, rather like the California or Oregon coasts. When we finally got out, we were glad for some Thai take-out and a soak in the motel spa.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we drove over some high hills, picking up cherries and kiwi fruit at a farm stand on the way. We had spectacular views of Tasman Bay and then Golden Bay. In the picture from the overlook, you can just see that most of the orchards in the valley are covered with bird netting. The rock formations up there are a type of karst or marble that weathers easily forming sinkholes, caves and interesting surface formations. The Maoris have a legend that a great monster was destroyed up there and these are his scales. Which is interesting because the largest land animal was the moa, which they quickly hunted to extinction, but they would have been familiar with whales and other large sea creatures.

We had a very nice motel unit in a Holiday Park campground. The beach stretches for a long way with the campground near the eastern end, so there were interesting rocks and coves to explore. Cici went swimming right away, and we discovered that the beach is shallow and gently sloping, so it takes a long time to get out to waist level. It was very calm. As the afternoon progressed, the tide went out, leaving a vast stretch of wet sand, and we got to explore past the rocks that had earlier been a barrier. People enjoy using the wet sand as a medium for writing messages as well as constructing sandcastles and pools, so there were a number of Merry Christmas wishes. That evening we discovered we had excellent TV reception, so we watched a Nativity movie starring NZ actress Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary; it was an ok interpretation. We checked its literary accuracy against the Gideon Bible provided.

Christmas Day we headed out early to explore Golden Bay. First we went east to an Abel Tasman memorial. He was the first European explorer (Dutch East Indies Company) to reach New Zealand in 1642. When the local Maoris saw his ship they gathered on the shore, blowing their conch shells as a challenge. Thinking this was just a greeting, the Dutch blew their horns back. So the next day when the ship launched some small boats, the Maori attacked in their canoes and killed four of the crew. The ship fired its cannon, got the rest of their crew back, and left. No other Europeans showed up for over a century, until Captain Cook showed up in 1769, and fared much better with the North Island Maoris. It probably was very helpful to have the extra hundred years without colonial pressure.

On the way, we stopped at the harbor jetty for a look at the two Tata islands (Tata was what we always called one of my grandmothers, and in Maori it appears to mean “close by”). We had a wonderful chance to watch a seal swimming around right at our feet, looking for fish and shellfish, although we never saw it find anything, so it seemed like it was just performing for our viewing pleasure.

Then we were off for an hour’s drive to the far side of the Bay and the base of Farewell Spit. The spit itself stretches for 35 km across nearly the whole top of the Bay, but there is no vehicular access, except by a tour bus, which was not operating on Christmas Day. Instead, we walked about a half an hour through sheep and cattle paddocks to the west coast ocean side of the hills, reaching a really spectacular and deserted wide beach at what is called Fossil Point, although we did not see any fossils. As we walked around, we almost tripped over seals sleeping soundly on the beach. Some of them looked like they had climbed out at high tide and were now 30 meters from the sea, and beginning to get covered with drifting sand. Others had climbed up under the cliffs to find shady nooks. I was really glad we had decided to take this drive rather than laze around on the beach all day. As it was we still got back for a late lunch, and I was able to sun bathe and take my anticipated Christmas Day swim. There was much more wind and so it was also possible to play in the waves. That night we also went out to look at the moon and the stars. All and all, a great Christmas.

We weren’t sure how long it would take to get back to Picton, so we left fairly early the next morning. We retraced our steps to Motueka and then took a road going south. On the map it looked like it went through a wide level valley, but in fact it wound along a stream between hills with only very scattered farms and a surprising number of eucalyptus stands. A lot of distances on NZ maps are like 50 kilometers, and one thinks that won’t take very long, but often the best average speed a person can do is 50 K per hour, so it takes as long as many 50 mile roads in the US. Eventually, we got to our goal of Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park for lunch. The lake is long and narrow between high hills, almost alpine looking. There were ducks to feed, and a black swan, and even eels hanging out at the dock. Cici and Ron saw a kea, or South Island parrot, on a walk in the forest. After driving through some of the Marlborough wine country, we got to the ferry with plenty of time to spare.

I will post soon about our activities on the North Island with Cici and later our daughter Catharine.