Tuesday March 21, 2023 - Kateritera to Takaka

 

Good sleeping last night in our shared/private accommodations. The Englishman and Michiginian are leaving this morning and a new batch of folks will come in tonight. The owner stopped in to tell us that the weather changed, which we are learning is pretty common, so we decided to not do the boat shuttle up to Abel Tasman, but instead drive the wiggly back roads up to Split Apple Rock. We had breakfast here and left around 8:30.

Split Apple Rock is a big rock just off shore that looks like ti was cleaved apart at some point. At low tide you can walk over to it and when we got there after a short hike, we realized it was high tide so we could only get to the stairs down to what would have been the beach this afternoon at 4pm or so. OK, new plan. We decided to drive the twisty RT 60 up over Takaka

Hill to the town of Takaka. We realized that the gas tank was getting low so we needed to gas up before going the one way up to Takaka, which may or may not have gas.

We have a small problem with fuel here. They have a lot of self serve 24/7 fuel stations with no people around. You put in you credit or debit card and tell it how much you want on which pump and fill up. None of these have worked because the machine never asks for our pin number and then rejects the card because we did not enter a pin number. Some programmer needs to be taken out back and whacked with a 5-¼” floppy. So we had to go into Motueka just south of us and find a station with a real live person and a cash register. We filled up ($5.89 per gallon) so we were good to go. This Toyota Yaris is very miserly so we must be getting 50+ mpg so it’s not too painful. And guess why there are no Ford F-150’s here… And I am also guessing that the roads are so well kept here because a lot of this gas money goes into keeping them in good repair.

So back north toward Takaka. RT 60 is one windy little road. We found a farm stand before heading up the hill and bought fresh strawberries. The also had apples, blueberries, tomatoes, avocados, limes, and other assorted veggies. The strawberries were wonderful.

Up the hill with not too bad traffic but steep narrow windy roads. It started to rain off and on as the weather guys said it would and it sprinkled a bit the rest of the afternoon. When you hit the top and start down the other side, you are in the Golden Bay area. Golden because the sand is gold colored. This whole area is indeed at the end of the road but there seems to be more going on in this “end of the road” community than where we are staying. Takaka is a “hippie town” with lots of shops downtown, a decent grocery store, and we might have been able to get gas there (non self serve). There were a few places for lunch and we happened to pick the popular one, The Wholemeal Cafe, which Deb had been to 3 years ago when she was here. We had a couple of pies (one chicken and mushroom and one veggie) and Deb got a small salad, and coffee and chai latte of course.

We then drove to a cool place called The Grove which is another DOC (Department of Conservation) site. It has real weird/cool rocks mixed with a tropical forest undergrowth. I was waiting for Captain Kirk or a brontosaurus to jump out from the rocks. It felt like we were walking through a movie set.

Next stop the Fresh Choice grocery store in Takaka to get a bottle of wine and some food for dinner. Back over Takaka Hill on RT 60 and we stopped down the street from our AirBnB to check out the other beach south of us. It was around 4:30pm so the tide was low and we walked over to what was an island this morning. We could also see that at low tide you can walk all the way back to town on the other side of our AirBnB. Lots of expensive empty houses over here so they must be vacation homes. We have not run into a lot of fancy houses on the South Island but there is a small concentration of them here.

Back to the AirBnB and two other couples were checking in. One couple is from Quebec City and the other couple is from Houston, TX. We all cooked our own meals and we sat outside chatting until 8:30 or so. It is always a treat to meet and get to know new people.

Tomorrow we take a water taxi into Abel Tasman and do a little hiking. Stay tuned.