Saturday - Christmas at Bark Bay Hut

We had a special Christmas morning, waking up in the hut with our international hut-mates, breakfast of croissants and Nutella (yum!), and plenty of time to play on the beach before our 12:30 ferry pickup.  All I wanted to do was lie on the beach and read my book, so I chose a promising spot and got down to it.  Little did I know how quickly the tide was coming into the sand flats….the boys started calling to me, obliviously reading Pillars of the Earth, and I looked up just in time to see a wave soak my clothes (which I was using as a towel, since we didn’t have room to pack a towel for this little overnight trip).  I obligingly moved to higher ground, amazed at how the scenery had changed in the 20 minutes I had been engrossed in my book.  I settled down in a new spot for another 20 min, but the tide was relentless.  We had to cross quite a flow to get to the next sandbar, and then wade through rushing water to get back to shore…not sure I would make it without swimming, which would NOT have worked for my only set of clothes and our digital camera!  A bundle on top of my head and wading through waist-deep water, luckily I didn’t lose my footing.  It was pretty close, though!

After taking our ferry back to Kaiteriteri, we settled back into the campervan and set out to drive to Westport.  We had been warned that nothing  would be open on Christmas Day, but thought at least we would pass a fast food restaurant or two.  Nope.  Nothing of the sort.  We had cereal and milk at a picnic bench on the side of the road.

Christmas Dinner

Our guidebook recommended a terrific restaurant near Westport, so Lane called and they were serving a prix fixe menu for Christmas dinner.  After several days of cold, makeshift meals, it sounded terrific.   As we approached the restaurant, The Bay Café, we got our first glimpse of the wild, gorgeous west coast of South Island.  We got out of the car, stood and stared, open-mouthed.  A mountainous boulder, with huge waves crashing around it and the sun dipping low in the sky…the sight and sounds were mesmerizing.  Our table had a perfect view of this scene, and the food completely lived up to the scenery.    Coen enjoyed a  smoked bacon salad, Turkey “bon bon” (wrapped in phyllo), ham with roasted vegetables, chocolate fudge cake, hot cocoa, cushions, and of course the view!  It was a Christmas dinner for the memory books, that’s for sure.  I can’t remember when I’ve felt more suffused with well-being.

 Coen in the middle of Split Apple Rock, Tasman Bay.

 Alaine and Coen kayaking in Tasman Bay.

 One of many humorous signs seen on our trip. 

This one was on the ferry taking us across Cook Strait.

 Lane, Finn and Coen at the beginning of our hike up an extinct volcano.

The first hour of the hike was through sheep and cow pastures.

Hiking on the Abel Tasman Coast trail, Dec. 24.

Friday – Christmas Eve – The Coast Track

One of the things we really wanted to do was hike part of the Abel Tasman Coast trail.  There are several huts judiciously placed along the trail, and some folks hike the whole thing, in five days or so.  We weren’t quite that ambitious, but definitely wanted to hike part of the trail.  We got the last 4 spots in Bark Bay Hut.  This is how it worked:  a ferry picked us up from Kaiteriteri Beach and brought us up to Anchorage (not the Alaska one!), about a 30 minute ferry ride.  There we hiked along the trail to reach Bark Bay and our sleeping hut.  The trail winds along in the woods adjacent to the coast—lovely!  We got drizzled on a bit at first and couldn’t figure out where the rain was coming from, as the sky was blue!  This path is 12 km and was advertised as a 4 hour hike.  Add in a swim break at Cleopatra’s Pool, lunch, snacks, and two children, and it took us….any guesses?  You win if you said 7 ½ hrs… Yes, we were all pretty tired, and very glad to see that hut!  (really a cabin, with three rooms, each with big rows of bunk beds). I don’t think I mentioned that we found out yesterday there are no cooking facilities at the hut, so we won’t be having a hot Christmas Eve dinner.  (Camping stove was not one of the items we packed for NZ!).  Peanut butter and jelly it is!

Photos

 Coen and Finn at the Pancake Rocks

 Coen the Mer-Boy on Kaiteriteri Beach

  More Pancake Rocks - I loved them!

 Coen and Finn in the glowworm caves in Charleston

Alaine catching some rays on Christmas Day.  Bark Bay, Abel Tasman Park.

Flora & Fauna Sightings

Kingdom Animalia

• Cows.  Lots and lots of cows.  Calves, too—as it is late spring here, the calves are about four months old, which is when they start eating grass.  They are adorable.
• Sheep.  Lots and lots of sheep.  Lambs now too.  In the North Island, most have been sheared, but they’re still fluffy on South Island.
• Alpacas, from time to time.
• Deer—we saw a deer farm at the side of the road!  Not sure what that’s all about.
• Black feathered, red-footed –beaked and –eyed, oyster catchers.  The black/red combination is dramatic
• Cormorants – I love their large black fan tails
• Little blue penguin (deceased)  L
• Shorebird with incredibly long legs for its size—ten inches long perhaps, with a  body slightly larger than a robin’s
• Bird that, at first glance looks like a duck, but doesn’t have webbed feet or a broad bill, and doesn’t seem to use its wings at all.
• A bug that looks like a centipede but it is about 6 inches long
• Extremely large, extremely fuzzy bees with white bottoms.   If they didn’t buzz so loudly, and not right in my face, I’d say they were downright cute.
• No kiwis yet!

Kingdom Plantae

• Ferns as big as trees (Coen and Lane used their “branches” as walking sticks)
• Ferns with huge black vines
• Ferns with lovely, gigantic, fractal-like fiddle heads (learned that NZ has over 160 species of ferns)
• Coen is especially fond of all the purple flowers Kiwis put in their front yards

 

Thursday - Kaiteriteri Beach

Loving Kaiteriteri Beach!  Bright sunshine, warm weather, lots to explore.  This is a busy holiday park—clearly a favorite of the locals.  They bring these huge trailers, then set up a tent next to it, then a patio next to that, for a set-up with five or six rooms next to our puny little piled-on-top-of-one-another campervan.  It seems a little bit ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop me from being jealous of all the space!  Apparently whole neighborhoods come down here together every year and stay for a couple of weeks, sort of an extended off-site block party.  It does sound like great fun. Again, our measly three days seem paltry.

We have met people from:

• New Zealand (lots)
• Australia (ditto)—New Zealanders seem to think of Australians as cousins, definitely one of the family 
• Great Britain
• France
• Germany
• Switzerland
• Israel
• Poland
• Canada
•  

And, surprisingly, just one other family from the U.S.  I thought Americans would be swarming around here.  It is cute, though, how everyone can recognize our “American accent.”  Do you think of yourself as having an accent?  I didn’t think so.

Had the most fabulous afternoon!  25°C and “fine” today—perfect kayaking weather!  We signed up for a half-day family guided tour around Tasman Bay and got an amazing guide named Regan.  In his thirties, with the NZ-style dreadlocks I’ve seen here and there, the sort of fellow to call everyone “mate” (equivalent of “dude” stateside).  He was funny, knowledgeable, and (with an 11 year-old boy at home) knew exactly how to relate to our boys.  Kaiteriteri, by the way, means ("eat quickly quickly" - this has a funny story about Maori tribes)  The view was, of course, stunning.   I enjoyed a quiet inlet only accessible at high tide and the great stories of Abel Tasman that Regan told that included drawing maps in the sand with a stick—incredible storyteller and I was spellbound!  Maybe time to include the story later—or ask Coen about Abel Tasman and what happened when he “discovered” NZ next time you see him!  On to Split Apple Rock (great photos of Coen there, coming soon, I promise!)

After the amazing kayaking trip, we stood dazed on the beach and Regan came over to ask what was up.  “Not sure how to top that,” I replied.  “Have an ice cream from the shop just up the road,” he suggested.  Perfect.

Wednesday – Nelson, Kaiteriteri Beach

A beautiful day dawned today—at last!  We had a fairly short drive to Nelson, one of NZ’s oldest cities, located near the water (as almost everything is here—the farthest you can be from the sea anywhere in NZ is 90 km).  I thoroughly enjoyed the size, charm, and setting of Nelson—it was easy to picture living there.

We spent over an hour in the information center in Nelson doing some thinking about what we wanted the remainder of our trip to look like.  All agreed that there had been too much driving and rushing about and not enough time actually doing things in New Zealand.  We spoke to the experts at the info desk, checked brochures, and with great reluctance) decided to cut Wanaka from our trip and use the three extra days to take our time elsewhere.  Specifically, three days at Kaiteriteri Beach, located on Tasman Bay at the north end of South Island.  This will give us some more beach time, which we all love (to my surprise, I am becoming more of a beach person as I grow older), let us do a kayaking trip, and—one of Lane’s fondest desires while we are here—embarking on one of the famous Abel Tasman Coast walks and spending Christmas Eve in a shared “hut” (cabin) on the beach.    Abel Tasman was the Dutch explorer who “discovered” New Zealand and named it after Zeeland in the Netherlands; a supposedly very lovely park in this neck of the woods is named after him.

Okay, this will be an adventure!

While in Nelson, we enjoyed a little civilization and the opportunity to fill up the tank, go grocery shopping, and sneakily purchase a few Christmas presents to surprise the boys with.  We told them well ahead of time that the NZ trip was their entire present—but a few NZ souvenirs seem very appropriate.  And some chocolate, of course!  Also bought some new beach shoes since my Tevas were literally falling apart (Coen is extremely jealous of how stylish and comfy my new ones are and, unfortunately, his feet are now big enough that his threat of stealing them actually means something….) and some yummy NZ freeze-dried camp food for our Christmas Eve dinner.  Had some delicious pizza in Nelson in a funky little second-story Italian restaurant located above the first movie theater we have seen in NZ.  The restaurant was decorated with old movie posters, which provided plenty of lively conversation, especially as our table’s poster was Goodfellas, and Lane got to try to explain to Finn how the Mafia worked.

We have our plan:  on to Kaiteriteri Beach to soak up some rays!