Across the Takaka Hills & Far, Far Away

Sunday

Nelson to Golden Bay

Contrary to most recommended tourist routes, we continued westward from Nelson driving along, what is classed as, one of the Top Ten NZ Roads to Collingwood, the route taking us through rich fertile valleys & climbing over the rugged beauty of the Takaka Hills.

The first stage of the drive hugs the coast, passing vast orchards, hop gardens & vineyards, farm shops, micro breweries & ice cream shops. However once we'd passed through Motueka the climb in earnest began.

The Takaka Valley highways climbs & the road twists & turns to the summit, the views across the countryside never failed to impress, hardly surprising that this area had featured in the film, Lord of the Rings.

The summit car park offered views across & down to Nelson & the Cook Strait, whilst strewn about in surrounding fields were an odd collection of weirdly shaped stones, a bit like the limestone pavements in the Yorkshire Dales but without the 'pavement' bit.

The descent from the heights into the fertile Takaka Valley was equally impressive, sweeping hair-pin bends, dramatic vistas, plus the added bonus of hardly any traffic.  

The valley is home to yet more dairy farms, & once again these are on an industrial level.  Outside milking barns, or sheds as they are known, long snaking lines of cows walking slowly along to the daily milking, fields of maize & round irrigation pods keeping the pastures lush & green.  

The road hugged the banks of Takaka River eventually bringing us to the only town on the drive, Takaka.  The small town has an air of the pixie dust come Glastonbury, seeming to be populated by brightly dressed 'hippies', backpackers & then, farmers.

We drove on through the town, relieved to have seen at least one petrol station, passing the famous microbrewery come pub Mussel Inn. 

The evening's night stop was Golden bay Holiday Park, accessed via a long, narrow lane, but boy what an overnighter!

The site was by no means at full capacity & so we were able to park as close to the sandy beach as was possible, with only a few hardy shrubs & bushes between us and the bay.  

So there we sat, on a balmy evening, sipping a rather delicious local Pinot Noir, tucking into a Greek Salad made with NZ olives, watching the sun slowly sink into  the Cook Strait.

Today's mileage = 60 miles

New Zealand Part II - South Island

Week Two - South Island

Wellington to Nelson via Picton

The start of our second week in the Kea motorhome started bright & early with a short drive to the dockside through a maze of roads twizzled around like spaghetti.  Sat at harbour side waiting to embark gave us the  chance to view our fellow passengers; a mix of lorries & rental vehicles really & all nationalities, though it has to be said that there were a lot of what we supposed to be Japanese, busy taking photos of themselves in a variety of posses.

The ferry set sail at 9.25am, leaving the sheltered harbour of Wellington & headed out into the notorious Cook Strait, which l guess could be a bit like the North Sea on a bad day, but in our case more like a Mill Pond with a strong tide race.

The weather improved as the journey progressed.  Brilliantly blue sky, cool blue waters and the temperature rising substantially.  The scenery was pretty dramatic too.  Once the ship had headed into Queen Charlotte's Sound, everybody on board rushed on deck, cameras poised, VCRs at the ready.  Forest covered slopes reaching down to the shoreline, small coves & bays & all the while the amazingly coloured sea taking us onward towards Picton.  

As we neared our destination, a sail boat would pass us or a homestead reached only by sea would appear on the shoreline, but civilisation finally caught up with us in the form of reggatta of small dinghies, a sea plane racing down the bay slowly reaching take off speed & finally a rather large cruise ship that completed dwarfed everything in the vicinity.

Disembarkation went smoothly & turned right out of the port heading along the narrow, twisty, fantastically scenic Queen Charlotte's Drive.   Do not miss this drive, the roads are exceptionally quiet, every corner provides another photo opportunity - rugged green hills, unspoilt coves, an abundance of wildflowers, & ok there are bends, a lot of bends if you've driven in the Alps this is nothing.

Whenever we drove more open farm land, we noted that this was given over to industrial scale dairy farming & we began to see the first of the large, [& by large l mean over 400 cows], herds of cattle.

Driving through the fishing town of Havelock, look out for the Mussel Pot, a fish restaurant dripping with large, green, plastic mussels from, well, everywhere.

The countryside here on South Island was already noticeably different from North Island, the roads almost deserted & towns & settlements few & far between, the exception being that of Nelson where we put down camp for the night at the Matai Valley Motorcamp.  A real character of a place set amongst the tall pine trees close to the Matai River, home to some really weird & unique motorhome conversions l have as yet to come across.  The facilities included washing, kitchens, showers etc & a very unusual 'dump' station that was not really user friendly.  The site offered wifi which you had to pay for, the cheapest way we quickly discovered was to pay for 24 hours which gave you ample time to surf / skype / facetime.

Total mileage = 70 miles