gardenofwine.com

Pohara Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, Pohara, South Island, New Zealand 3565km

Click Here for Pictures

Season’s Greetings to all our friends in the US!

We spent the last 2 days in the south island’s northwest corner called Golden Bay. Part of the time it was Grey Bay, due to the rain. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful corner of NZ and we had a nice time.

We left Old McDonald’s yesterday morning and headed back to Motueka for groceries. From there we drove over Takaka Hill, a scenic 50km drive until we reached the town of Takaka, the area’s hub. We drove a few more km to Pupu Springs, the southern hemisphere’s largest (water volume-wise) natural spring. We went on a short walk to see the springs and enjoyed the sunny and warm weather. Shir and Orr walked most of the way by themselves. Bravo.

We then drove back through Takaka to our campground in Pohara, and conveniently parked right in front of the playground. The kids had fun while Paola tended to the laundry, and before we knew it, it was supper time. The skies were getting cloudy again and we hoped for the best.

This morning we awoke to a grey day, but there was a bit of blue over the ocean. We drove northwest towards Farewell Spit. At the spit we took a gravel road that brought us to Wharakiri Beach. Almost. We had to walk about 1km to get there. The walk was very scenic, starting with a trail through farmland hills used for grazing. As we walked through sheep and cattle, the kids were beside themselves. Unfortunately we miscalculated and brought the double stroller along, and since the path was very narrow, and since Orr and Shir were walking, I had to struggle with a useless piece of equipment.

At one point we had to ditch the stroller, and continued to the sand dunes leading to a magnificent beach. The sky was cloudy and it was quite windy, bit still it was a grand view. Ron led the girls in a wild romp across the dunes, while I shot pictures in a frenzy.

We tried to have lunch at the beach, but the wind blew so hard that we kept getting sand in our food. So we continued walking along the beach, exploring the limestone rock formations out in the water, passing by sleepy sea lions, and discovering caves. It was exceptionally beautiful, in spite of the gloomy skies.

Our luck ran short and it started to trickle. At Paola’s suggestion we started heading back to the path to the motorhome. Shir and Orr were a bit tired by now, so we had to do a lot of vexing and coaxing to get them to move. As usual, after a bout of hysterical crying, the girls found themselves in our arms. We found ourselves running, as the slight drizzle was showing every sign of becoming an outright downpour. We met up with the stroller and cursed the moment we ever took it out of the RV, for now Poala had to manage three wet kids while I heaved the behemoth through cow poop and impossible hilly sheep tracks.

By the time we finally made it to the RV, it was a downright torrent and we saw other people dashing madly to their cars. We got the kids inside and changed clothes for those who needed changing. After washing the manure off the stroller wheels and drying up, we hit the road, thankful for the few hours of dry weather we were able to squeeze out of today.

On the way back to the campground we stopped at Collingwood to buy some chocolate at Rosy Glow, a boutique confectioner that set us back $30 but was worth every sweet cent.

It’s almost midnight and the rain has not let up since it started in the early afternoon. I don’t know if it is the weather or what, but Ron started asking some hard questions over the past few days. “Why is the sky so high?” and “Why do boys have nipples if they don’t have to feed babies with milk when they grow up?”. During his shower this evening, he suggested a possible answer to question number 2: “When God made boys and girls he made them very similar so he left the nipples on the boys”. Can someone help me out here?

Good Night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 4:12 am and is filed under Big Trip, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.