The ferry to the South Island is around 3 hours and it's clear on ar
rival that the climate and scenery are very different to the North. Apparenty it's been raining all “summer” (the Kiwi summer is the opposite to a European, straddling Christmas) and the clouds are heavy when we get there. We drove 2 hours through endless lush greenery in landscape now m
ade familiar by the Lord of the Rings films, made in this area.
We walked through vineyards around Nelson (meeting Kenny the huge black pig on the way), which apparently is one of the main wine regions in the country. We were susprised to hear that most of the vineyards have been going only since the early 90's, and although the climate is warm enough to produce great wines, it was not a focus of attention at all in the past.
Yesterday we did a marathon walk at the Abel Tasman National Park. It r
uns along the coast so the standard thing is to take a boat as far North as you like, walk back to another point and take a boat back. Unfortunately we got our timings and location wrong, bought a ticket for a boat in 45 minutes which we had to catch 20 mins drive away and 3 km walk away. After parking the car, we ran the 3 km up and down the tracks in the forest to Coquille bay, in boots and carrying daypacks,hoping to catch the boat. Somehow we managed to get there in time, but we knew we then had a 20km walk ahead of us.
The boat took us past beautiful bays of golden sand and, as always, few people. In England, this whole area would have been swamped! The combination of sea, sand, greenery and mountainous countryside is unique, I don't remember seeing it anywhere else.
As we stepped off the boat at Bark Bay, we knew it was going to be a hard “tramp” (the Kiwis call trekking Tramping) and headed off at a fast pace. The pathways in the park followed the coastline and the tropical greenery was constantly enveloping. It made me remeber the walks we did when I was growing up and my grandparents were living in Devon, as strangely much of the countryside has seemed similar to that area of England. It is more tropical here, but as we have traveled around, it has made me try to remember to appreciate the English countryside more when I get back to Europe.
We met a young guy from England, Mike, who had just graduated a few months ago. “The recession has killed most graduate jobs” he told us, “so I thought I'd do a bit of travelling and work out what I want to do with my life”. The temptation to give him all sorts of advice from being 20 years further down the line was huge. But when I was his age, I didn't listen to much advice from people like me
no, so I kept quiet and we wished him luck. We've met a few travellers with his approach – you ask them “how long are you away?” and their answer is often “until the money runs out”.
The walk was amazingly beautiful. How do you describe continuously lovely greenery and coastline? And we marvelled at the pathways that are carefully maintained by the National Park.
After around 20 km, our feet started to hurt,
but we pressed on and enjoyed the whole walk. That morning we had read about a journalist who is walking across the Canterbury Plains for 360km, and after the first day of 30km, his feet were shredded with blisters. Our boots have held up much better than that as Nicki hasn't had a single blister for the whole trip and mine have been few. Nevertheless, after covering 24km in total, we were glad to air our feet (luckily for Nicki, my boots came off outside – they smelled bad...)
rival that the climate and scenery are very different to the North. Apparenty it's been raining all “summer” (the Kiwi summer is the opposite to a European, straddling Christmas) and the clouds are heavy when we get there. We drove 2 hours through endless lush greenery in landscape now m
ade familiar by the Lord of the Rings films, made in this area.We walked through vineyards around Nelson (meeting Kenny the huge black pig on the way), which apparently is one of the main wine regions in the country. We were susprised to hear that most of the vineyards have been going only since the early 90's, and although the climate is warm enough to produce great wines, it was not a focus of attention at all in the past.
Yesterday we did a marathon walk at the Abel Tasman National Park. It r
uns along the coast so the standard thing is to take a boat as far North as you like, walk back to another point and take a boat back. Unfortunately we got our timings and location wrong, bought a ticket for a boat in 45 minutes which we had to catch 20 mins drive away and 3 km walk away. After parking the car, we ran the 3 km up and down the tracks in the forest to Coquille bay, in boots and carrying daypacks,hoping to catch the boat. Somehow we managed to get there in time, but we knew we then had a 20km walk ahead of us.
The boat took us past beautiful bays of golden sand and, as always, few people. In England, this whole area would have been swamped! The combination of sea, sand, greenery and mountainous countryside is unique, I don't remember seeing it anywhere else.As we stepped off the boat at Bark Bay, we knew it was going to be a hard “tramp” (the Kiwis call trekking Tramping) and headed off at a fast pace. The pathways in the park followed the coastline and the tropical greenery was constantly enveloping. It made me remeber the walks we did when I was growing up and my grandparents were living in Devon, as strangely much of the countryside has seemed similar to that area of England. It is more tropical here, but as we have traveled around, it has made me try to remember to appreciate the English countryside more when I get back to Europe.
We met a young guy from England, Mike, who had just graduated a few months ago. “The recession has killed most graduate jobs” he told us, “so I thought I'd do a bit of travelling and work out what I want to do with my life”. The temptation to give him all sorts of advice from being 20 years further down the line was huge. But when I was his age, I didn't listen to much advice from people like me
no, so I kept quiet and we wished him luck. We've met a few travellers with his approach – you ask them “how long are you away?” and their answer is often “until the money runs out”.The walk was amazingly beautiful. How do you describe continuously lovely greenery and coastline? And we marvelled at the pathways that are carefully maintained by the National Park.
After around 20 km, our feet started to hurt,
but we pressed on and enjoyed the whole walk. That morning we had read about a journalist who is walking across the Canterbury Plains for 360km, and after the first day of 30km, his feet were shredded with blisters. Our boots have held up much better than that as Nicki hasn't had a single blister for the whole trip and mine have been few. Nevertheless, after covering 24km in total, we were glad to air our feet (luckily for Nicki, my boots came off outside – they smelled bad...) 
