Week 6 -- 1st - 2nd Nov

Monday Nov 2nd, 2009
We have slept in until 9. Breakfast is brief then we head off to discover what Nelson has to offer.
The city is very industrial on the outskirts with a modern port and all the support businesses that are situated around a port. Once inside the city proper that has both very quaint and modern buildings. It was almost as nice as New Plymouth! The down town has permanent awnings on every building. If it were to rain, you could still shop without much trouble. We found this mosaic whale on side street.

In the centre of town is a hill garden surrounding an Anglican Church at the top. There are paths crisscrossing the hill and also around the hill. Planted on the hill are trees from all over the world. The trees were planted around 1880 and are quite mature. The flowering shrubs have just started to flower. They are at least two weeks behind the North Island. It feels like we are still in May with both the constant spring flowers and weather. Actually, the weather has warmed up and we are no longer wearing sweaters and coats.

Along the city coastal road we can see that the tide is out. The sand stretches on forever. On the sea side are long gouges in the rock from weather or lava flows or both. We park and have to navigate the busy traffic to cross and take pictures. They are quite amazing.

Tomorrow we are off to the most northern point of the South Island!

Sunday Nov 1st, 2009

It’s the morning after Halloween and for New Zealand, Hallow's Eve was pretty quiet. We are up with the alarm and head off to breakfast. This morning we are having our regular peanut butter and honey toast with fresh coffee.

We are off to Nelson. It is known to be a lovely British style town and we are looking forward to visiting. The wind on the road to Nelson is incredible. Our morning coffee stop is in a town called Havelock. Just outside of Havelock we stopped at the Pelorus River. This is a beautiful rocky gorge. Crystal clear water flows from the mountains to the strait. As we climb the mountains the road begins to twist and turn up and over the other side.

Nelson is a much larger city than we first thought. We drove through the center of the city and quickly decided that this was going to be our destination to explore tomorrow.

The backpacker’s lodge is in a town just outside of Nelson, in Richmond. We meet up, once again, with our young Canadian friends, Christine and Scott. The rest of the day is laundry and relaxing. As the drier is unavailable, we had to hang out three loads of laundry. The wind was in our favour and quickly dried them.