Category: Road Trip 2010-11

Aaah Golden Bay.  If you read the Week 1 post, you’d know we were escaping the rain around Malborough Sounds.  We decided to head West to escape it.  But we didn’t.  We’ve hardly been online thus the lack of updates, and in some ways that’s been great. Spending around 10 days in the Golden Bay area was like a holiday from our holiday, and despite the few days of rain, the weather lived up to its reputation.  Spending months in Wellington and watching the weather reports I never realised rain actually existed in the area.  It’s a myth, although everyone kept telling us it was the first in 6 months.

We started in Kaiteriteri, which is a big base for the Abel Tasman and kayaking around the Abel Tasman National Park.  It was an interesting time to visit as we saw the build up of the typical Kiwi Christmas break as 4x4s, boats, caravans and annual neighbours slowly filled up each block, often booked in for the same block as last year.  Caravans and motorhomes stretched from bleeding edge technology to traditional and much loved 70’s caravans – a Kiwi classic.  A couple of days of swimming, and trying the trails at the Kaiteriteri mountain bike park was a great way to kick back and relax.  Kayaking was considered, but at $180+ per day it was bodyswerved.

From ‘teriteri’ it was up and over the Takaka Hill to the climbing and ‘hippy’ mecca of Takaka to have a looked into the Paynes Ford climbing area before heading up towards Farewell Spit to bring in xmas.  We based ourselves at Collingwood.  Xmas eve was spent walking for around 5 hours on and around the ‘spit’ – a long sandbank stretching out from the mainland, and surrounding beaches.

Collingwood was a really quiet place so despite hardly anyone around the campsite we decided we’d just make it a mix of a traditional UK and Kiwi xmas, or as much as we could – a good few beers, with a couple of stints at the BBQ, and a spot of fishing out the back of the camping site.  Despite recent Kawahi catches, I just succeeded yet again in catching my lure in the rocks, and having to snip it off.  From here we went down to the west coast for a drive on Boxing Day which wasn’t a good year end for some German tourists….  on the way back we were flagged down and ended up taking 3 girls to Takaka after their car slid off the gravel road and ended up in a ditch 15m below.  They were so lucky to walk away pretty much unscathed.  Be careful on those gravel roads and drive at a safe speed – expect traffic coming round those corners!

A few years ago I bombed through Takaka which was probably just as well at the time – unless you can spend a few days in the area it’s harder to pick up on the chilled vibe around.  Some “locals” claimed it was something in the minerals, and some just seemed to move here and never moved on, but it was a very relaxed place.  Takaka is full of colourful people, colourful clothes, nice shops full of both local artists, and imported good from Nepal and Asia. It has an eclectic weekend market (probably made more electic since our visit was on 1st January!), and some great cafes full of organic and healthy choices.  For a nice modern bar, check out Roots Bar and it’s superbly friendly owner, and the oh-so-hard-to-leave outdoor log fire.

We managed a few days of climbing in Pohara just 7km from Takaka – much more chilled out than Paynes Ford, far less people and great sea views as well.  Last year was finished in style – some climbing, followed by kite flying on the beach then a swim in the sea, retiring to a local Inn just outside Takaka to take in the New Year.  The Riverside Inn was about the only place left with a legitimate space for the van.  Despite hoping to spent New Year’s Eve in Roots Bar we had little choice but to spend it here and check out some of the local characters, of which there were plenty.

The New Year was started by very reluctantly leaving the Golden Bay area.  The weather, and maybe our lack of wet weather motivation, had prevented us doing a lot of what we had hoped.  About 7 days in all was lost to rain.  We left the area without doing an overnight tramp, without biking the Rameka track, and doing far less climbing than I hoped.

There is so much to do in the Golden Bay and Nelson areas that we reckoned we could leave in two months and still feel cheated, so it was time to move on, knowing that if we settled back in Wellington it was one of the closest, and easiest places to get to on the South Island. To the West Coast via Nelson Lakes it was….

This post like probably many to come on the subject is a bit later than planned as I’ve been offline when on the road.  Our crossing on the ferry was a joy as the wild weather of previous days had calmed down.  We had decided to take it easy the first few days to find out feet, realise we were away and pretty much relax.  With that in mind, we stopped off in Picton and instantly any budgeting idea was thrown out the window – a South Island road map was bought (as it was newer than the ancient one we had), and some inspect repellent was thrown in at the last minute.  15 minutes, $50.  Not good.

It was our intention to head into the Sounds initially but the we couldn’t see the tops on the crossing so decided not to head over quite yet so it was a short 10km drive to the DOC site at  Whatamango Bay.  In all, we had driven a mere 20km that day, including stopping off for diesel on the way to the ferry from the house, yet we were now on the South Island.  That’s the type of travel I like – no airports, no customs, no baggage checks, and no x-ray machines.

We were instantly chilled, although had a slightly surreal vibe around us as we kicked back with some wine, sun and with a cracking view over the bay.

The following day we decided to head down towards Blenheim so get some mountain biking in, but after exploring the bays along the coast road and getting into the gravel road driving again we only made about 20km down the road, past Robin Hood Bay (with a free DOC site) and stayed at White’s Bay Recreation Reserve – another cheap DOC site.

White’s Bay is a cracking place to spend a couple of days if you have the time.  There’s no shops around you, but it’s a beautiful beach with rocks and some fishing, nice sunsets, and if you meet the friendly ranger you’ll get a look into the first Cable Station that existed and sent messages to Wellington years ago.  Apart from that there’s some walking up to the surrounding summits (anything up to 6 hours) and some advanced mountain biking.

We got so close to Blenheim it would have been crazy not to visit a winery, but before we did that it was off to the Wither Hills mountain bike park to get some practice in.  This is a nice place to kill a couple of hours, with a variety of trails from 5-20km.  Once we did this, it was more than justified to visit a vineyard so we picked Lawson’s Dry Hills on the recommendation of the local i-Site, and a great one it was too.  This vineyard was a family owned business and there was no pressure to buy, they had many tastings, and there were cheeky little descriptions of each of them.  Remember if you love your red wine, this is primarly white wine country, so expect the vineyards to have far more of them than the reds!

We were keen to get closer to what was meant to be our first target – the Marlborough Sounds – so we headed back to Picton and onwards to the DOC Momorangi Bay Motorcamp so we never drove all the way in.  Not so long after we got there the heavens opened, and the rain started to absolutely piss down.  We never realised that this was to be the way things went over the first couple of weeks.  Despite this I headed out and fished off the pier, and caught my first 4 fish.  2 of them fell back in as I lifted them out, and 2 of them were too small so all of my first catches went back into the water – not quite fulfilling my dreams of having bbq’d fish!  There doesn’t appear to be much to see around Momorangi Bay at first glance, but there is a glowworm walk up the back, and we saw dolphins playing in the Sound, and a stingray swimming around the pier.

In the morning the heavens were still flooding us so we decided to skip the Sounds for now and head towards Nelson.  As you can see from this picture taken from a ‘viewpoint’, you can barely see the boat going through the Sounds.  The whole way was chucking rain down on us, even heavier than any shower I had seen in Wellington.  We knew we had a leak in the front of the van, but the dripping onto my foot sadly confirmed it wasn’t the door seal that we suspected.  It was a bit of low start to the trip after the first few days of relaxing.  Our first week in the Marlborough Sounds were off, any ideas of cycling part of the Queen Charlotte Track were off for just now, and the fishing opportunities there would have to wait.  We headed West.

After taking some time out from this site to write the New Zealand Backpacking Unwrapped guide book I’m happy to say that as of next week I’ll be hitting the road again on a South Island road trip.

On 14th December I’ll be heading on the Bluebridge ferry to the South Island for up to three months, depending how long the money lasts.  When I first backpacked here I bought a car and hooned around both the North and South Islands for three months, but it really was a whistle stop tour.  I saw most of the things I wanted, but I never necessarily managed to experience them in the way I wanted.

This time I’ll be travelling with a partner and doing more of an extended ‘kiwi road trip’.  Instead of a Subaru I’ve got a converted HiAce van of my own, with bikes, bbq, boogie boards, climbing and fishing gear on board.  It should be an adventure packed trip with lots of activities thrown in.

The last time I did quite a bit of diving at the Poor Knights, visited most of the main highlights, did some climbing, and made an attempt at the peak of Mount Aspiring.  Despite not getting to the summit I decided to beat it and went skydiving at Wanaka instead.

On this trip I’m hoping to experience places at a bit of a slower pace and stick around for a few days at most places.  I’m looking forward to spending some time in the Marlborough Sounds, doing some mountain biking, more climbing and will hopefully be able to catch some fish.  If I managed to get some catches, it will be more than I’ve managed on my recent Wellington outings – I’m getting very experienced at snagging lines and cutting my gear off.

If you run an activity company or tour you’d like us to visit, please drop me a note via the contact page and we’ll get in touch.

If you’d like to keep up with the trip, follow the Road Trip 2010-11 Category from the menu or right sidebar.

See you on the road!