Wellington to Greymouth (Days 12-15) 


The ferry trip was spent mainly sleeping (me) and being a film director/editor (Thomas.) It passed quickly considering it was almost 3 hours (although maybe that was because of the whole being asleep thing.) When we reached Picton we decided to drive on to Nelson (about a 2 hour drive) as we had booked a kayaking trip in Abel Tasman for the next morning. The scenery was beautiful and we found a freedom parking area in Nelson (double bonus.)

The next day we continued the drive to Abel Tasman National Park as we had a kayaking trip at 9:20. We had booked this via bookme which was a great website for last minute deals on activities around NZ. However, kayaking trips were still super expensive and for a half day guided kayak tour it was $178 for us both. However, as we hadn't ever kayaked in the sea before we felt like this was the safer option than attempting to just hire a kayak and paddle in a circle for an hour (which was likely with my inferior kayak skills.)

The tour guide was very helpful and we were able to successfully kayak along to split apple rock (so called because it apparently resembles an apple split in half which is kind of true.) We then pulled our kayaks on to the beach to have a look around the caves before heading back to our starting point. The way back was definitely quicker (firstly because I was steering instead of Thomas who resembled a drunk driver when attempting to steer a kayak, and secondly because unbeknown to me Thomas had been having 'breaks' whilst he had been at the back of the kayak.)

The weather wasn't great and we were pretty cold by the end of the trip. However, the scenery was again very pretty (where isn't in New Zealand?) and the sand at Abel Tasman was amazingly golden. We had enjoyed our trip but to pay $178 for essentially an hour of kayaking was way too much.

We then decided to go on through Nelson Lakes and head towards Westport for the evening. We stopped at Lake Rotoiti where we had originally thought to camp, but the sandflies deterred us and we decided to keep going so we were nearer Westport for the next day. The campsite - Lyell camp ground - was at first glance a nice location (but overpriced) and even more so overpriced when we opened our door to discover the vast amount of sandflies in the area. We then decided it was best to not leave the car for the rest of the evening and we ate a supper of tomatoes and an orange so that we wouldn't have to leave the safety of the van to cook (and essentially face a severe biting from the sandflies.)

The following day we drove to Westport and went straight to the surfing area of Tauranga bay (what's new?) I was pretty excited about this surfing area as it was also the home of a fur seal colony. Thomas attempted to surf but the currents were very strong and he decided to wait until the tide changed, so we went to look at the seal colony instead. The seals looked quite like rocks at first, but there were at least 50 seals and seal pups. They were adorable and we spent a good half an hour just watching them (they were mainly sleeping but still kind of mesmerising to watch.) 

The surfing got better at the mid tide and so off went the obsessive surfer for a while. When he returned I tried (and spectacularly failed) to attempt surfing in this area too, managing to stand up once for a very brief few seconds. It was very rainy so the rest of the day was mainly spent eating. We decided to go to subway and then when we still weren't full went and tried various types of bread from New World (some weird Hawaiian pineapple bread thing and hot cross buns) so by this time we were feeling ridiculously full. Westport was very small and we couldn't even find anywhere to wash our clothes (which were really smelling now) so after one more morning of surfing here we decided we would head south towards Greymouth.

Unfortunately for the obsessive surfer the waves weren't very good and so we began our travel down the coast. This journey took us along probably New Zealand's equivalent of the great ocean road in Australia and we stopped on the way at Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks. These are basically rocks that look like they've kind of been stacked one on top of the other, therefore forming a stack of pancakes. They were actually pretty impressive and had formed blowholes where the water from the sea came up. The rest of the journey was very straightforward and in only a couple of hours we reached Greymouth; which was maybe a tiny bit bigger than the tiny town of Westport.