Day 95 - safely back in Hanmer Springs

After yesterday's exertions and not too much sleep to be had last night, it's been a pretty quiet day.  Pete had already arranged a Christchurch day-out for Morag to meet her mother for lunch so we were on watching-over-the-twins duty. The cold weather (15 degrees predicted for this week!! Unpack that jumper...) didn't lend itself to very much jumping about in the garden on the trampoline so we read a lot of stories and got covered with glitter while making Christmas decorations...

Decisions decisions - would madam like gold or silver?

Both? Excellent choice (if a rather wonky finished product. Any prospect of a career in pre-school education down the drain I fear) 

The other good news of the day is the revival of our mobile phone, despite inadvertent full-on immersion in the stream yesterday in D's shorts pocket. After careful drying out, we held our breath and pressed the on button... A little red light.  Hurrah.

"On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me : 

Five keas cackling, 

Four possums playing, 

Three cows a-cuddling, 

Two pavs a-cooking and 

A kiwi in a palm tree."

Day 94 - Puna to Hanmer, with an unexpected and unpleasant sidetrip to Greymouth police station

Monday morning's weather took a turn for the worse, which may have contributed to what happened on the road 30 miles out of Punakaiki as we made our way home to Hanmer.  

Following Pete and Morag, Duncan was alarmed to see an oncoming car weaving and swerving; relief that it had missed us quickly turned to panic when, in the rear-view mirror, he saw that it had driven off the road and into the ditch, and completely disappeared. 

We about-turned immediately, to find that the car had landed upside-down at the bottom of a 20' deep ditch with a strong stream running through it. Dunc, Pete and Unnamed Local Chap slithered down onto the top of the inverted car and, to cut a long and very grisly story short, rescued from the flooded wreckage a small, sodden, deeply-in-shock boy (whom they left with me, wrapped up on my lap to try to warm and calm him for the half-hour til the ambulance arrived) and sadly unearthed the bodies of the two other passengers, the mother and teenaged brother, both of whom had drowned. 

Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly.  

Then of course, no sooner than the boys  had scrambled out, scratched, bleeding and smelly from being thigh-deep in the stream, than the police wanted formal statements from us about what we'd seen and done (so we've all drunk more Greymouth police station tea than we'd like), and to take Duncan back to the crash site to look at the skid marks (with perfect timing, the crash team chose just the moment of our arrival to have its crane hoist the car out of the culvert...) 

Little doubt that Dunc, Pete and U.L.C. saved the boy's life and are unsung heroes. The only bright spot in the tale is that the press is reporting this morning that the boy, having spent the night in hospital, is already over his physical injuries and his daddy (who works in the far south of the island) is coming home to him right now.  

As you'd expect, we're all still a bit shell-shocked. To cheer us all up, a few views from the trip home  

and Kiwiana baubles from our (rather drunken!) Hanmer tree

and the next line of the countdown ...

  

"On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

Four possums playing.

Three cows a-cuddling,
Two pavs a-cooking,

And a kiwi in a fern tree"

Day 93 - a Sunday in Punakaiki

Punakaiki is a small community south of Westport, on the edge of the Paparoa NP.  As well as having a lovely beach (yes, that's the sunset view from the verandah of our rented bach), 

its biggest tourist draw and claim to fame is the Pancake Rocks, 

a heavily eroded limestone area where the sea bursts through several vertical blowholes during high tides 

(sometimes with rainbows). 

There's a walkway past the 'pancake'-layering limestone (created by immense pressure on alternating hard and soft layers of marine creatures and plant sediments)  

and, along the beach are sands and outcrops

Hope you're into the pre-Christmas swing ...

"On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

Three cows a-cuddling,

Two pavs a-cooking,

And a kiwi in a fern tree"

Day 92 - Westport to Punakaiki for the weekend : exploring ... part VII

On Saturday morning, we were due to drive down the coast to Punakaiki - to meet Morag and Pete, who'd rented a place for us for Saturday and Sunday nights. 

Our B&B not having any wifi, we stopped off on the high street at the Westport library to check in on M&P's expected time of arrival in Puna (three cheers to the NZ taxpayer by the way as the libraries have been uniformly excellent).  We were so engrossed in emailing that we barely noticed all of the activity behind our car.   

Even when Duncan observed a green-bewigged elf and I saw a small fairy walking past, we didn't put two and two together. It was only when a police-car parked behind us and a team of kilted bag-pipers amassed nearby that we twigged that something was up... And we were traffic-coned in and not going anywhere!  

Cue the Westport Christmas parade

Lots of sweets were being thrown from the floats, presents given to children - all good fun. Floats, ponies (from the racecourse), cars and motorbikes (from the speedway track), shameless advertising by the local coal industry (who probably sponsored the affair I guess) and Father C on the loo (unclear!!) made for a happy half hour's entertainment.

Once the parade was finished, we finally headed southwards down the coast, stopping off at a cute little bay at Charleston, 

before making it to Punakaiki (of which more tomorrow)

Meanwhile, altogether now...

"On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me

Two pavs a-cooking,

And a kiwi in a fern tree"

Day 91 - Murchison to Westport : exploring ... part VI (and an alternative Twelve Days TO Christmas...)

Next to the river Buller, not far out of Murchison, is the longest swing-bridge in NZ; 110m long and Lord only knows how high! 

The views to the canyon below were spectacular and we did a shortish walk through the old gold-mining works - a major fault line runs through here and, in the 1929 earthquake, the ground rose by 4.5m which makes for interesting terrain. You can apparently still pan on the river as well -  you can have a go yourself (allegedly a tourist recently found a nugget worth NZ$900, much to the locals' chagrin!)

Then onward to the coast (the mouth of the Buller) at Westport, and Cape Foulwind with a seal colony, a cheeky weka (another flightless native)

and more great views. 

Westport (first settled in 1861) itself has some nice architecture, particularly the municipal buildings (plus NZ's last open-cast mining!). 

We've also been looking at various towns' cenotaphs - shocking how many suggest that brothers or cousins from a small town were lost in WWI (and even worse if the same name crops up in the WWII list). Westport's is an impressive memorial.

By way of festive cheer, we're going to do a reverse "Twelve Days of Christmas" countdown to 24/12, Kiwi style.

Feel free to sing along...

"On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 
A kiwi in a fern tree" 

TBC!

Day 90 - southwards to Murchison : exploring ... part V

First thing, the tide had gone out; the beachfront was lovely and peaceful

En route back, we stopped off in Takaka (spot what is wrong with this Christmas high street shot? Yes, it's the blue sky and hanging baskets full of flowers...)

but the scenery was just as lovely on the way back downwards

Including on our detour to Lake Rotoroa in the Nelson Lakes National Parks, though unfortunately we were plagued by sand flies (small flying ninjas without even a mosquito's courtesy of that annoying buzz to let you know it's coming to bite you) so one snatched photo

and then we made our escape.  The other big news of the day is that Duncan braved the barbers - a strawberry ice to help regain his strength after being scalped

While he was being shorn, I wandered in Motueka; on one wall, a mural of the Cape Spit area.  Spot a familiar kiwi?

Day 89 - Motueka via Abel Tasman NP to Farewell Spit :exploring ... part IV

Motueka's raison d'etre is as a hopping-off point for trampers to the Abel Tasman National Park (opened in 1942, 300 years after AT first sighted the NZ coast).

After a fine home-cooked eggs and bacon, we headed north via pretty beachside Kaiteriteri

and through the Park up windy SH60,which tops Takaka Hill, giving great views of the wooded hills and occasionally the coast (and Motueka)

and down at Takaka itself, which is the formal start of the Golden Bay region. 

As we were headed to the far north for the Farewell Spit, we decided to by-pass the local "town", Collingwood, and go out-of-the-way by getting in some supplies and holing up at a very tidy little studio at Puponga (which isn't even on the map! Our Swiss-Belgian host tells us it has 15 permanent inhabitants). So naturally we were fully prepared with the bare essentials : cafetiere, fizz, strawberries, savoury muffin (pepperoni and cheese)...

Cape Farewell, Farewell Spit and the surrounding wee bays are just gorgeous.

Farewell Spit itself is mostly sand dunes, 26km long; all but the very first little bit is visited only by day-trip sand buggy. We were satisfied by clambering up the hill and admiring the view.

Very very lovely.  Added to which : how cool is it that the top of the south island is in fact shaped like a kiwi?