From our journals dated January 16 - 19, 2006
The Websters turned us onto a section of South New Zealand called Golden Bay that is seldom discussed by the travel guides, a necessary conspiracy to avoid over-development of a magical place. They even loaned us all necessary camping gear and gave us a game plan, ensuring that we would have a blast in a secret garden of artists and beaches.
We rent a tiny little manual car for the week that we dubbed "The Wee Car.
" It was a Holden Barina, a Japanese import that was originally owned by a Japanese person for a few years then offed to a consolidator importer before tough emission standards rendered it worthless. At first I was terrified at the idea of shifting with my left hand while navigating through the gauntlet with my right, but I found that the constant supervision needed for shifting a 1-litre engine keeps my mind focused on survival..
.it only get's dangerous when your mind is allowed enough room to wander back into American highway laziness.
We just recently learned of an obscure but significant Kiwi driving rule regarding left turns.
At an intersection, if an oncoming car wants to turn right, meaning across your lane of traffic, and you are turning left, then you must yield by slamming on your brakes, fishtailing a couple 360's followed by a 3-car rear-ending pileup. Then I think back to the guys at the car rental in Auckland, that guy just smiled and handed me the keys with no orientation or warnings whatsoever..
.in fact he mentioned the small detail of having to drive on the left just as we were driving out of the garage .
On the drive out of Nelson, southwest to Golden Bay, we stopped at one of the many vineyards for a taste.
The Grape Escape seems to be popular on the backpacker circuit, so we hopped in to find super friendly people explaining the delicacies of the wines with a smile and decent sense of humor. The wine of the month was free to taste and any other wine was 50 cents, not a bad deal, but a far cry from the imagery I had in mind. Somehow I expected open bottles of wine strewn about with long-haired backpackers wallowing on the ground like poisoned pigs.
It was a bit more classy than that, and I appreciated it, but I would have liked a bit more wine in my glass, that's all. This was truly just a taste, it's just a "taste", son.
They had an organic line of wines and a standard one, so we stick to the organic side and found them extremely tasty on an empty stomach.
We both agree that we should get more into wines and we drive off giddy, but on the left.
The drive up the Takaka hill was a staggering tour over a hill made of brown and white marble. The wee car struggled in 3rd gear most of the way, sprinkled with careening 70-degree turns, oncoming petrol trucks and road bikers.
A few beers in the belly and this road would be full-on suicidal. We reached the apex after a 45-minute climb, we stop to take a gander over the Nelson area at Hawkes Lookout. It's a 5-minute hike off the highway, down a lovely wooden footbridge etched through the marble rocks and thick bush.
The last few feet through the dense forest was refreshingly 10 degrees cooler and as the lookout came into view, the sheer cliff that we were walking out upon was exposed...
nothing but jagged marble hundreds of feet below.
From that vantage point, we could see our entire journey over the past several weeks..
.Nelson's cityscape on the beach to Tira Ora's glistening Malborough Sounds fading off in the sea towards the North Island. It was an epic moment for us so we lingerered a while professing our love to each other and amazement to ourselves.
The view continued to force 'oohs and ahs' around every new turn as we descended the hill. We fill up the rest of the day with various 10-minute distractions..
.stopping off at eclectic looking shops and stomach-turning lookouts and peeks of the blue water as we work our way into the center of Golden Bay. That's the brilliant part of having a car of your own.
No tour bus could provide the spur of the moment "Whoa, let's take a look at that" meanderings. You can do it all day long on your own, but it does tend to blow a schedule.
We finally make it to the campsite and have a few hours of light left to set up camp.
We pitch our tent in fits and spurts, figuring it out through mistake and toil, until we get something that resembles the stable contraptions built by others. We end up with an extra pole and a nappy looking rain cover so we try to convince ourselves using Jedi mind tricks that the 3rd pole was just a sick joke by Donny, like having an extra box of screws and bolts after working on your car. After a few minutes scratching our heads and conversing with a 10-year kid who was camping next to us, we spot a tent of the same design, successfully implementing the 3rd pole.
It's an eureka moment for us and after replanting 20 stakes, we have ourselves a bonafide tent. Yee-haw!
Then it rains.
And rains, and rains, and rains. For the next 36 hours it rained with the voracity of a waterpark toboggan ride. The wind blows our tent sideways, but it was Rebecca's side - luckily for me.
Each gust of wind elicits a prayer for salvation, and we seem to get it every time with a sigh of relief. The tent held up pretty well, a few missing stakes caused some leaks, but we made the best of a damp and drippy situation. We figure it was a great introduction to the sport of camping.
The next morning, fairly wet but not yet fully miserable, we drive north to see the Farewell Spit...
a long, skinny strip of sandy land that shoots off the coast and for kilometers runs into the sea, barely above water. There's two anomalies associated with these spits. They have freshwater rivers running inland and their hobbies are to collect shipwrecks like postage stamps.
The particular spit we were traveling towards had an ingenious lighthouse owner who, for his entire career, carried 2 bags of dirt every week with him to the remote location and eventually planted a patch of tall pine trees, saving more ships than any single bright light could.
We don't make it to the spit becuase half way there we come across a sign for Rebecca Caves and Glowworms. We figure with a name like that it was meant to be, and it can't be raining underground so off we go.
We have some time to kill before the next tour so we go Tiki Touring through the ill-maintained dirt roads during a heavy rainstorm in a tiny two wheel drive car...
what could go wrong? We first come across the Devil's Boots, an impressive rock formation that looks like two huge brown boots sticking out of the ground, each the size of a small house.
The mud road continued past the Devils Boots towards a goldfield that registered a small blip in the stratosphere of the tourism radar.
We slowly guide our tiny, and I mean tiny, white car through large ruts of dirt and rock, barrelling through puddles of muddy water half the height of the car. Rocks and roots cause some gouging of the underbelly of our lovely wee car. We finally come to a section deemed impassable, even by a fully disposable rent car, so we turn back the only way possible.
...
backwards through the same ruts that had us screaming in fear going forward. A couple more bodypart knocking jolts and we're back to the Devil's Boots and half way to civilized road maintenance.
With even a little more time to kill we drive to the Naked Possum Cafe for some coffee. This is a possum-themed restaurant and bar with a retail store completely filled with naked and not-so-naked possums and possum parts. New Zealanders absolutely hate their possums.
They were introduced from Australia, where their populations are kept in check by a less hospitable environment and food chain. In New Zealand, however, they go absolutely wild in the lush green bush, eating everything in sight, leaving little else for birds and other small animals. They have thrived to an estimated 80 million.
We get a five minute dissertation by the proprieter on why the possum should be wiped off the face of the planet with all available weapons and the best ways to decorate their lifeless bodies once dead. My favorite one was a skinned and tanned possum hide stretched out and hung as wall art, with little holes cut out for the eyes and other neccessary orifices. The runner-up was the possum leather planter complete with a Rata sapling.
..the favorite plant often devoured by the cute little critter.
The Rebecca Caves were closed, so we were led on an hour-long tour of Te Anarua, an adjacent cave tha t had less glowworms but more stalagtite architecture. Mark, the tour guide was a Californian hippie expatriate who had lived in Houston too, and seemed to really enjoy being down in the muddy caves. With our lighted hardhats and flashlights, um, "torches," we were ready to go caving.
Mark's sarcasm made him familiar right away. Still pouring rain out, he says, "OK, let's just wait here for the tour bus to bring us over to the caves." No such luck, a dripping walk through the bush leads us to the opening.
When first entering the caves, we saw grafitti on the walls that turn out to be old signatures, way before guides were operating. We found an autograph from the late 1800's and several from the early 1900's. Water continued to drip cover them in calcite.
The names are literally set in stone.
From the start we knew this was another of those NZ experiences - one that would never be the same back home. We were climbing narrow ladders in the dark, inching through the tightest passageways.
"These are called barbershops," Mark quipped, "because you might have your sideburns trimmed." We had to turn our shoulders completely sideways to get through. The kids loved running through the tunnels that all us big kids had to crawl through.
He hammed it up telling them this was where the hobbits live. We shimmied, climbed, crawled and crouched all over the place. He took the bravest among us on some side tours - jumping over big holes and climbing into passageways.
He showed us beautiful formations like thousands of hollow calcium straws, five-foot tall columns and formations resembling dragons, crocodiles, and chicken feet. The guide was full of clever little quips..
.when we saw the straws hanging from the ceiliing, he handed us a couple broken ones and said, "They're not party favors man, you have to give them back" The calcium formations were sublime. Creamy white and smooth, the age and voluptuousness of a burlesque queen.
..you feel like you're in another world and you truly are.
That night, after some refreshing 5-minute, 50-cent showers, we cook dinner and "get scrumped". In our constant search for a cheap buzz, we find a plastic 1.5 litre bottle of cider that packed a 8% alcoholic punch, named "Scrumpy".
We invented a new drink by adding fizzy fruit punch to the Scrump. We get pretty silly on the Scrumpy Scrump and spend most of the night making up new songs about Scrumpy. "Get your Scrump on!
" and "Get your Scrump up on my hump, I Scrump, you Scrump, we Scrump" were epic duets sung on the beach, during lowtide on a windy night watching a great sunset.
We wake up to find the Coffee Pirate on the camp grounds..
..a chipper fellow, not quite in full-on pirate gear, but with enough Pirate flair to let you know a bad pirate joke wouldn't go over well.
Though friendly, he's a very protective local who is vocally opposed to the current pace of development and escalating real estate values of the Golden Bay. He maintians a website showing off some amazing photographs of the area..
.check out Virtual Bay.
He tells of a duo of bad tourists named the Botox Twins who applied a plethora of makeup on a tourboat and of another synthetically modified model who berated him for 10 minutes on his inability to supply a skinny frapachino in the middle of nowhere.
The Coffee Pirate carries a nice espresso machine in the back of a truck, serving tasty hot beverages to campers miles away from town, and a lady of the high-maintenance type can only focus on what he isn't offering: Skinny Fraps, Decaf. Everythings, White Hot Chocolates, and Larger Marshmallows. These type tourists are predisposed for dissappointment.
Instead of being amazed by the local offerings and novelty of a remote amenity, they stay locked in the proverbial search for the unobtainable holy retail grail. The coffee pirate joked that the place should change its name from Golden Bay to "Cold and Gray" so the rich Europeans would stop coming and buying all the beachfront property that could have been afforded by his grandchildren. A curious bit of the naming history of the region (hey, this blog can be educational too!
):
The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman anchored in this bay in1642. However, it resulted in a hostile encounter with the local Maoris when a party from his ships tried to land and three of his men were killed. He bestowed upon it the name Murderers Bay.
English explorer James Cook renamed it Golden Bay during his voyage of discovery in 1769.
We head out again in the wee car for Wharariki Beach. It's a bit confusing to find the place because it's located on a large farm called Puponga Farm.
It's hard to fathom, but hundreds of tourists politely parade through acres of farmland, through herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and piles of cowshit to reach a beach. Crazy wind, blowholes, wild waves, lazy seals, stoat traps, and submerged caves were waiting for us on this remote beach. It is an absoloutely stunning beach, but it is unsafe for swimming due to the violent waves and wind.
The wind truly was unrelenting and powerful. Small groups of picnicking families held on tightly behind the safety of sand dunes and rocks, but we were more adventurous, of course. We toured the blow holes.
..erroded openings in the caves that invite oncoming waves to enter and explode out the back with extreme pressure and release.
You would be in a lot of trouble if you ventured into one of these long caves to find a rushing wave speeding towards you.
We continued exploring up the beach and had to cross a dicey section at the wrong time. A large rock face jets out into the ocean and during low tide you can walk around it to reach the other sections of the beach.
We were several hours late, with the tide about 2/3's in, and found ourselves getting beaten by waves and holding onto the rocks for dear life...
all while trying to keep the camera dry. We survive, but not without looking stupid. But the brilliant part is, no one is looking because we basially have this entire beautiful beach to ourselves.
We get a little lost and after several minutes of self-doubt and the horrible thought of getting lost in this thick bush and harsh beach, and we find some tracks of previous hikers. It's the rock bridge! We saw it on the map, but it's much harder to spot when you're climbing over 6 foot bushes barefoot and sundrenched.
To complete the circle, we return through a vast green farmland, hundreds of healthy dairy cows and thousands of freshly sheared but shy sheep surround us and keep a perfect space bubble of confusion and mistrust.
The entire area of Golden Bay is filled with hippies-turned-artists. We check out several of the artist's studios which are often the front of their house.
It's a very welcoming and creative vibe. You know that most of the artists residing here will never be world-renowned, but you know that they are happy, and that simple happiness is what they value.
The next night, after the flood had subsided, we got as dressed-up as our limited wardrobe allows and went to the locally famous Mussel Inn.
We have fresh scallops swimming in white wine and herbed butter...
yum! The Mussel Inn is owned by the brother of the owner of the Naked Possum, so one family has two of the most successful venues in the Golden Bay, both having the only live music in the area. Tyree Robertson, a spicy lesbian ex-junkie accoustic guitar player was performing.
She belted them out like Janis Joplin - not quite as raspy, but just as powerful. She pulled out an old Hank Williams Sr, song "Mind your own business" which went over well with the drunken crowd. The microbrewed Manuka-honey beer was very tasty.
After a few nights camping at the Holiday Park, we drive back towards Nelson to Wainui...
on a wild goose chase basically. The hippy cave guide told us about free camping and mentioned Wainui Falls as his favorite. We tried to find a spot to camp, but end up at the actual falls site and decide to hike up to see what effect the last few days of hard rain had.
..it was gushing!
A fun 30 minute hike up a well maintained path gets us to the falls. A wobbly chain-link fence suitable for only one person to cross at a time was a highlight, but didn't phase us now that we've seen plenty o f New Zealand tracks. Not happy with the amount of danger on the wee hike, I decide to climb straight up through the thick bush for a closer look at the falls.
It would have been a nasty tumble.
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