Nelson Marlborough – Part 109a. Nelson Marlborough – Part 1
Nelson Marlborough – Part 109b. Nelson Marlborough – Part 2
Nelson Marlborough – Part 2 – Nelson LakesPicton to Endevour Express
Starting to feel like we’ve begun Holiday Mark II properly now. Once again it’s about looking forward rather than looking back and reminiscing. Kind of sad to have left the North Island. Had a lot of fun and met some great people. So many different characters, with different view points on life and their country. And if the North Island might be characterized by the cities, and the farming, what will we find in the South? Much less people I hear. And much bigger mountains… I think the hard stuff might be about to begin :)
We collected supplies from Picton, had the hottest although most disappointing curry of the whole holiday and booked our one-way transport to ship cove. $67 with Endevour Express’s speedy catamaran. For a bit extra you can get them to deliver your pack to various resorts along the track each night, tempting, but of course we didn’t!Captain Cook & Ship Cove
So this is the Official Start to the “Te Araroa Part Deux… The Revenge”, the Cook monument. As you can imagine Cookie was excited to see a huge lump of rock with his name on. And with the sun out and surrounded by palms, ferns, and turquoise water, we felt much more in the ‘Half Way celebratory mood’ than back over in wet grey Welly. Part Two started to feel like it might not be all cold grey mountain despair, and might include some tropical summer sunshine and fun after all :) After a leisurely boat trip over, a good stint mucking about taking photos and dancing for the video, plus a few shots a-straddle-the-cannon, and some time reading the info boards, we’d left ourselves only a half day’s walking to do :)
Not sure how well known Captain Cook is around the world? But he’s pretty famous back home and here in New Zealand. The first European to set foot on New Zealand soil, plant a flag for king and country and all that. He first landed here at Ship Cove in January 1770 and by all accounts did a stirling job of mapping New Zealand’s coastline.
It’s not every day that you get to a massive monument with your name all over it, we were both quite duly excited (Nicky will be a Cook soon too). We’re not related though, well not that I know about!
Queen Charlotte Track
This Queen Charlotte Track is great. Long smooth flat gradient. Little houses and quirky stuff along the way. Bright blue sky. Glittering water. Bloody lush it is! Check out the cool old boat we just passed, Top Cat painted on the side :D We’ve got about four days of this, snaking around the bays and coves, and through the bush, at the very top of the South Island. Should be sweet!Our history isn’t that good, so we’re guessing when we say that the aforementioned Queen Charlotte was probably King George’s wife? The track probably named after her is 71km long, but we have another 17km extra to connect it to our next resupply town, Havelock. We’re aiming to get there in 4 or 5 days (it was 4 in the end).
The track crosses a mix of DOC and private land and there’s a $12.00pp fee to be paid towards it’s upkeep, which seems fair as a lot of work has gone into this track. It’s wide and easy graded, nice change to be able to walk side-by-side all day.
Able Mable The Trusty Tractor – Endeavor Inlet
There’s a real retro village feel about the little guest houses and cottages here. All sorts of beautiful artifacts and objects to grab shots of. This tractor not only had a wicked logo, but a brilliant name too :)
Probably the best campsite in New Zealand
We loved this place! After a long hot and sweaty day’s walk there is nothing better when you are expecting a regular DOC type campsite to find something very special like this. Tony Madsen’s put so much heart and soul, and thoughtful touches into this garden-like camp. Tiered grassy spots with winding paths and solar lights, a hammock for snoozing in, the freshest long drop loo I’ve ever been in. He’s even made a special outdoor solar shower area so you can wash your hair whilst taking in the jaw dropping views high over the glittering blue water. Absolutely gorgeous. It made us wish we’d spent a rest day here rather than in the capital. We had two private beaches to ourselves, and wild Weka birds to play with. ( They love trying to seal your kit! So much fun! ). I had the best night’s sleep there, although that might have had a bit to do with our fresh rum and lemon sunset cocktails! A little dip in the sea and collecting handfuls of fresh mussels for Cookie to cook up in the pot was just amazing. Our first wild-caught food!
If you’re thinking of doing the Queen Charlotte Track, you *must* spend your first night with Tony Madsen. He is such a character! And has the loveliest little dog called Bob :) There were even hand carved walking poles for sale out on the path with an honesty box. You can’t help but love this place!
After walking across half of NZ, I think we can say this with 50% accuracy that Madsen’s Camp is the best campsite in New Zealand!
Toilet so clean you could eat your dinner off it, hammock, two beaches, solar showers, BBQ, picnic table, really friendly host and more mussels than you could shake a stick at. This was by a long way not only the best campsite we’ve been to in New Zealand but the best either of us have EVER been to! Mainly because the chap running it was sooooo nice, he showed us the best place to collect mussels, taught us how to cook them up, he cleaned the toilet each day with fanatical precision, composted your food waste, burnt your rubbish, this place was like heaven.
A Pirate Feast of Rum & Mussels
Just an amazing day. Nico and Ollie – you are going to have such a great time when you come and meet us!Today was a good day, probably the best all holiday. We had a nice boat ride in the morning, we started a whole new island, we had a very pleasant walk, we purchased our first fruit from an honesty box thing (3 fresh lemons from the previous campsite), we stayed at our favourite campsite so far, we collected our first ‘wild food’, we had a dip in the sea then lazed about a beach while knocking back rum & lemon cocktails. Today is going to be a hard day to beat :)Awesome Elevensies at Big Bay
When we started this big adventure I’d read that the North Island was the subtropical one, and the South was more temperate. So I’d imagined the palm tree magic might be over by the time we got here. But no so! What a lush place for an elevensies snack bar wouldn’t you agree? I just had to pop my socks off and have a wade about in the cool waters. I saw a fish!… But it was only 5cms or so long. Not much meat on that for tea ;) We were joined again by our intelligent bird brained friends the Wekas. Once again coming to check us out and see if we had any tea spoons or shiny watches worth nicking. This poor fella only had one eye, but that didn’t slow him down. In fact I started to wonder if it was just a marketing ploy to make you feel sorry for him and put you off guard ;) You know these fellas can out-run rabbits and rip guinea pigs apart at the seams? Our Weka expert back at Owlcatraz said they hunt very much like the Velocoraptor’s in Jurassic Park… But I think he’s kinda charming… for an Evil ChickenOur awesome time on the Queen Charlotte track continues. We normally have a 15min break at eleven, but today’s spot at Big Bay under the shade of this tree, watching the Tony Blackbirds (oyster catchers) was so bloody nice we stayed for an hour :)Magic & Mushrooms
This place gets weirder and weirder :) We’ve already had the major creepy Hansel and Gretel woods of the Tararuas, and now we’ve more fairytale forest in the form of miles of perfectly formed cartoon toadstools! I kept half expecting a lil’ bearded gnome to jump out the bushes complete with his fishing rod and shoe us along Papa Smirf stylie… And then there’s the crazy hand painted signs every few metres. Clearly some o these mushrooms have been consumed by the locals! The owners of this section of track liked to have a bit of a fun with the tourists ;) Who knows what might be round the next bend. This section was full of comedy :DThe section of track between Punga Cove and Bay of Many Coves Camp seemed to be prime mushroom growing country. I’ve never seen so many mushrooms and these things were HUGE! It was like walking through a level of Super Mario Bros. They didn’t look like the edible variety though and all the talk of ‘magic’ on the hand painted signage made us think what kind of mushrooms are these..?