So, my three weeks in the north island was nearly up already. I will never be able to comprehend how fast this trip has gone. After a teary goodbye to Caroline at Auckland Airport, Nat and I hot-footed it across to domestic to catch a flight to Wellington, where we would spend a few more days annoying Nat's cousin Ken and his girlfriend Orla.
As I've said before, I really like Wellington, so a few days of lounging in nice bars and wallowing in the streets was most welcome. In fact the only bit I didn't like were two rubbish exhibitions at the city's art gallery, which don't really bear further mention. Lets just say that a man who can't paint and a woman who invents a half monkey, half tortoise creature are not my idea of artists.
Despite this we were both sad to leave to start our journey in the south island, but that might have been because of the rough ferry ride that awaited us on the Cook Strait first. Straits successfully negotiated, we picked up our latest dull Japanese hire car (this time a Mazda called Marvin) and headed to our first stop, Nelson. This is a decent sized town (or 'city' as the locals call it), but there isn't a huge amount to do there. Sometimes that doesn't matter though, especially when the hostel is of the high quality, low price variety and the sunset is probably just about the nicest I've ever seen.
After a weekend in Nelson we headed west to Onekaka, where we stayed in a proper hippy eco-resort overlooking the beautiful Golden Bay, and then to the even better Te Nikau, a retreat on the west coast in Punakaiki. We stayed for two nights there, in a brilliant chalet set in the woods.
There is something very special about the west coast of the south island. All the way along the coastline the spectacular and dramatic scenery is so good to look at that it doesn't actually matter if you don't do anything else. Continuing this theme our next stop was Okarito, a village of about 12 houses and one hostel that has the nicest bit of coastline I've ever seen. The hostel was, of course, good, and even had self-service check-in (you just walk into the house, write your name on the board, pick a room, and wait for the owner to get home from work). The place wold be paradise is it wasn't for the pesky sand flies, who are happy to feast on any available bit of exposed flesh.
Nature made up for this though, as in the evening we went out Kiwi spotting, a past time that most locals will tell you not to bother doing, as Kiwis are very rare and only come out at night (I'm talking about the birds here, not the fruit, just to clear that up). The hostel owner said she'd heard of one sighting in several years. Make that two, as it turns out that Nathalie and I are twitchers of the Bill Oddie ilk and saw one after about 20 minutes. We even took pictures of the little chap.
Off down the coast to Franz Josef next, where I did a glacier hike and got a haircut.
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