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| Golden Bay |
As I mentioned at the end of the last post: We had a great time with the lovely Valen family in Wellington, which started with a huge Taco-dinner with 14 people around the table on Friday and culminated in a gorgeous feast prepared by Jakob: A lamb casserole with oven potatoes, turnip mash, mozarella-tomato-rocket-salad. The talent for cooking obviously runs in the family, since son Johannes made a great chocolate cake, served with cream, strawberries and blueberries for dessert.
The next day we were all a bit sad to leave the Valen-family, Wellington and the North Island. When we said our good-byes, Ruth gave Lea a cuddly seal cub, which she has been holding ever since!
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| In front of the Split Apple |
Even though it was very windy, when we took the ferry over to the South Island, it could have been a lot worse. We spent most of the time outside on deck, looking for dolphins and whales, but ended up taking a photo of a photo of a dolphin in the lounge... We saw albatrosses though!
Even though we met beautiful scenery on the South Island, it was so cold (around 10°C) and wet and windy that I struggled to enjoy it. Luckily the wind and therefor the weather turned and we are now enjoying much warmer temperatures and just an occasional rain shower. As we learned on the radio, things had obviously been a lot worse a few days earlier: They have had unprecedented rainfall with numerous landslides (- here they call them “slips” which sounds half as bad), cutting people in remote areas off and forcing others to leave their homes. Most of the roads are open again, but we can still see the devastation. Riverbanks also show signs of recently much higher watermarks. The city of Nelson suffered badly, but things were almost back to normal, when we visited it. We were surprised by the size of this city, considering that only one million people live on the South Island. There was so much to see (and eat) that we forgot the time and thus found a parking ticket on our return. Bummer!
On our way to Motueka we passed “Jester's House”, a cafe with a large garden full of lovely details, art pieces, a playground and a creek, where eels in all sizes (some HUGE) were waiting for us to feed them with minced meet, which we had purchased in the cafe. After we had fed the eels it was time to feed ourselves with their glittering cupcakes, ice cream with gummy eels and affogatoes (which is espresso on ice cream).
The other half of that day was spent on a perfectly golden beach in Kikerikeri, in the rightfully called region of Golden Bay. When the tide came in and the sun went down it was time to move on. The beach had shrunk considerably and we were eager to see the Split Apple. It is really just a big, round rock in the sea (at high tide) that is split in half, but to get to the secluded cove, you walk through dense forest, which then opens to this sandy beach with exciting caves and diving seabirds in the clear water.
We then left Golden Bay to drive westward. We went down to Bull River by a little fall and started to wash for gold with our dinner plates. We found quite a lot and were wondering whether it was all just fool's gold. Suddenly a group of rafters appeared and went ashore to check out the fall. Their guide asked what we were doing and when we answered that we probably were collecting a lot of fool's gold, he explained the difference and showed us the right washing technique, before throwing himself and his customers down the fall, which capsized one of the three rafts.
It is obvious that the Gold Rush is over and we are not quitting our jobs just yet, since we ended up with no gold and a lot of sand fly bites! Even Lisa, who was by far the most eager, realized that washing gold was a tough job and maybe this was not “the happiest day of my life!” after all. It was a great day though, no doubt!
We went to an old gold-mining-town and traced the footsteps of those who once – like Lisa – had been determined to find gold. In what is now dense forest again, you can see what is left from those days 150 years ago. Not much…
We drove on and reached the west coast. It was great to see the sea again and luckily Cape Foul Wind did not present itself worthy of its name. Here, in Tauranga Bay, we got to see seals!!! We saw a whole colony of animals in all sizes! This was also the first place we saw wekas, flightless birds that look quite like a Kiwi but with a shorter beak.
We then found a place right on a nearby beach, where we fell asleep to the sounds of the waves.
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