Saturday 11th Mar Nelson (24degrees)

 We woke to a beautiful day and after breakfast headed off. Our destination today was the town of Nelson, located on the northern coast, of the south island. The drive along the east coast from Kaikoura was spectacular and we decided to call in to a lookout at Ohau Point. To start with we just enjoyed the beautiful scenery and then after a couple of minutes we saw the seals! A large colony of New Zealand fur seals were enjoying themselves, sunning on the rocks or swimming in the ocean just below us! There were hundreds of them, many pups. It was very entertaining and we spent quite a long time enjoying the antics of the seals. Back on the road again, we decided to make a small detour to the lovely town of Picton, located on Queen Charlotte Sound. Again beautiful and spectacular scenery. Picton is the town where the large ferries come in from Wellington on the North Island. We saw a large ferry come in to dock while we were there. After checking out a lookout and the bakery, of course, we continued our drive to Nelson, arriving around 3pm. After settling in to our accommodation, we went for a drive around this large city of 50,000 plus people. Our hotel is conveniently located very close to the centre of the city so we also went for a walk along the main streets checking out some of the arty shops etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monday 27th Feb Lake Taupo (20 degrees)

Leaving Rotorua we had a short journey to Taupo, a beautiful town located on the banks of the huge Lake Taupo. We saw many more areas of geothermal activity on our drive as well as areas where the cyclone had either uprooted or torn huge branches off large pine trees. We stopped in at the visitor centre in Taupo to sort out our plans for the rest of the day, before heading to the Huka Falls on the Waikato Rivers. A short walk took us to various viewing areas of these impressive falls. We then drove on to the Aratiatia Dam. This is a hydro-electric dam but water is also deliberately released from the dam three times a day to recreate the rapids that were once here. This is a tourist attraction. We watched the opening of the gates and the ensuing rapids before boarding a boat to go on a beautiful and relaxing river cruise. The cruise was fantastic, particularly the wonderful commentary from the skipper. He carefully took the boat right up to the Huka Falls and we were able to take some p...
Read more

Sunday 26th Feb Rotorua (23 degrees)

I spent a few minutes this morning enjoying the peaceful, calm outlook from our unit, looking across Lake Rotorua, as well as checking out the beautiful garden on the property. We headed out this morning to visit Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. It took us about 30min. to drive there and after purchasing our tickets we  drove a short distance to see the Lady Knox Geyser that apparently would shoot up around 10.30AM. I found it interesting that you could predict when it was going to happen. We had a lovely woman doing the presentation and she explained that the Geyser was actually formed by man, over 100 years ago. Prisoners from a near-by jail were busy working for the government planting trees, and discovered the geo-thermal waters of the area. They regularly relaxed in the warm, mineral pools after a hard day’s work and eventually started bringing their washing to there do as well. One day a man dropped his soap into a deep hole where the water was coming up from. After a few minut...
Read more