Golden Bay and Abel Tasman Road Trip!

So from Christchurch I took the train to Blenheim. This is a gorgeous train ride up the east coast of the south island, looking out to the Pacific Ocean and mile and miles of lovely beaches and rocks and good waves. There was an outside viewing platform on the train, similar to the trans-alpine, so I stood out there a lot of the time enjoying the view.

From Blenheim I took the bus to Nelson. My hostel for the next few days was a lovely house that was pretty much a homestay rather than a hostel. They had one dorm room. The owner was an eccentric bloke from the lake district and he and his wife had a 2 year old son. It made a nice change to stay somewhere homely. On my free day in Nelson, once Id sorted out a car, I took a free bike from the hostel and cycled to the beach to get some sun. I think I rode the worst bike in the world. It only had 1 gear and no breaks... well the breaks sort of worked if you had about 500m to go before you had to stop, squeezing the breaks as hard as you could! But the beach was nice and I spent a nice couple of hours there soaking up the rays. On the way back the wind picked up quite a lot and I was doing battle with my 1 geared bike into this massive headwind - it was knackering! That evening, as it was summer, there were some free concerts on, one being the complete works of Shakespeare (abridged) in the garden of a big house. It was an hilarious show and it was lovely sitting outside in the evening sunshine with a bottle of cider.

The next day, anna and I headed off on our roadtrip to golden bay and the Abel Tasman national park. It was great to be driving again and we had a great time driving there with the windows down and music blasting out from a really good radio station playing lots of feel good summer songs!

To get to golden bay from nelson, you have to go over a large hill called Takaka hill. At teh top of it we took a detour off the main road and headed out to Harwoods Hole. To get to this we had to drive 11k down a dirt road and through a hippy festival - it looked really fun, shame we didnt have the time to stay and have a quick look around! The walk to the hole was a further 45 minutes through some pretty bush. We couldn't see as much of the actual 'hole' as we were expecting, but the views from the toptop of it out over the Abel Tasman national Park were beautiful.

Back on the main road and a little further on, we stopped off at pupu springs which are really clear water springs, the birth grounds to one of the Maori gods. From there we headed to our hostel in Golden bay. It was right on the seafront and had a mixture of buddhist and hindu gods all around the place with free yoga classes and the like. We hired a tent from a hostel in Nelson and pitched a spot out overlooking the sea. While we were making our tea for the evening, we got chatting to a couple of Americans and all headed out to the Mussell Inn at the end of the driveway to the hostel (but still a good 5 minutes drive away) for the evening. The inn itself was a really good place and it was a microbrewery that made its own beers and ciders. They did a feijoa (a type of fruit in NZ) cider and chilli beer amongst others. We sat outside next to the big log fire, it was a good evening.

The next day we headed out up to Farewell Spit which is at the top of Golden Bay and resembles the beak of a kiwi. it was a really windy day! we had a treck along one side of the spit with the wind behind us, crossed to the other side of the sand dunes for the walk back and got battered by a sandstorm!

We camped up near farewell spit. It was still pretty windy and our poor tent broke in the night :( but the next morning we headed over to Cape Farewell for a walk along the cliff top. From there we headed over to a beach wit big rocks and archways out to sea with loads of powerful waves crashing into them. It was lovely to walk along the beach, just looking at the power of the waves.

From there, me and Anna headed back down Golden Bay towards Abel Tasman National Park. We stopped off on the way at Takaka for a cup of tea and a massive slice of carrot cake each! Then we headed out towards Pohara and from there onto Wainui falls in the national Park.


The next day, the final day of our roadtrip, we headed further into the national park to have a look at the beaches. The weather was lovely and we found the most amazing golden beach to go to. We were going to do a walk, but when we saw the beach and the weather, we just grabbed our remaining bottles of Speights Summmit and headed to the beach! We had a great couple of hours sunbathing and swimming in the beautiful blue water, it was paradise and a shame we couldn't stay longer! But I'm really glad we got to see that part of the country.