Lovely as it was, we couldn’t stay in Golden Bay forever and in order to hurry us on our way and make us continue down South, the weather decided to take a turn for the worse again and so we made an inauspicious exit from the campsite at 4am with bleary eyes and in torrential rain.
First stop was waving goodbye to Davina and Ben at Nelson airport – Davina at 6am so that she could be home for work, ewww, and Ben at 8am after we’d all had a little nap in the car whilst trying to summon up the energy for the long drive down.
Colin and I drove back to meet up again with Dz, Jessie, Joel and Natalie as we were doing the scenic tour South for those that had never seen it before and to give Dz more of an idea of some of the other delights the South Island had to offer.
We decided to make tourist stop one Pancake Rocks, or Punakaiki, to be correct. They are basically rocks that have been heavily eroded to form what look like Pancake Stacks and have great blowholes at high tide. You can explore them via a number of walkways and are supposed to be pretty spectacular but our view was somewhat limited due to the adverse weather conditions....
First stop was waving goodbye to Davina and Ben at Nelson airport – Davina at 6am so that she could be home for work, ewww, and Ben at 8am after we’d all had a little nap in the car whilst trying to summon up the energy for the long drive down.
Colin and I drove back to meet up again with Dz, Jessie, Joel and Natalie as we were doing the scenic tour South for those that had never seen it before and to give Dz more of an idea of some of the other delights the South Island had to offer.
We decided to make tourist stop one Pancake Rocks, or Punakaiki, to be correct. They are basically rocks that have been heavily eroded to form what look like Pancake Stacks and have great blowholes at high tide. You can explore them via a number of walkways and are supposed to be pretty spectacular but our view was somewhat limited due to the adverse weather conditions....
The view we were trying to look at...
Slightly hampered by the rain...
Change of clothes anyone?
Not to be deterred, after a quick change of clothes we headed on towards the ever beautiful Arthurs’s Pass. As if by magic, the weather cleared for us too and so we re-visited the amazing rock formations of Castle Hill and even saw a few keas into the bargain!
Ashburton was the next stop, and the Smith residence to be specific, to drop off camping gear and share fish and chips and a beer with Mummy and Daddy Smith. We even got the added bonus of being able to have some of the best berries on the South Island from the Smith homestead!
By this time it was about 9pm and after a full day of driving it was decided that rather than continue for another 6 hours down to Dunedin, we would break our journey and instead, stay over by Mount Cook and take a more leisurely drive down the following day. A bed had seriously never felt so good after a week of camping!
Fortunately, our decision to stay was fully rewarded because the next day was absolutely beautiful blue sky and we ended up with perfect views of Mount Cook – at least, until we decided we’d go on a walk to it when the heavens opened once more.
Braving the FREEZING water!!
Retreating back into the safety of the car, we carried on, stopping in Twizel for a quick lunch (by which time the weather was amazing again and heading past the Benmore Dam on the way to the Moeraki Boulders.
Benmore Dam is a pretty amazing sight when in full flow – it is basically the largest earth filled water retaining structure in NZ. It has rushing through it up to 3,400 cubic metres of water per second and is the second largest hydro station in New Zealand – which to be honest, doesn’t mean much but take it from me, it is just awesome when you see it!
The Moeraki Boulders are about an hour outside of Dunedin and are a collection of massive boulders that have somehow been caused by erosion on Koekohe Beach. (Although there aren’t as many as there used to be because apparently they have been stolen for peoples back gardens!)
Joel does his best seal impression
I think that what we basically learned is that if you follow every brown sign to every place of natural beauty in NZ you’d basically never get anywhere fast!
And so on to Dunedin, to be reunited with the rest of the Golden Bay family.....
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