Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Day 101
We weren't in a huge hurry this morning after our very early start yesterday so we left the site at 10am to go in search of somewhere lovely for breakfast. We headed directly East and came across a man-made spit that jutted out into a lagoon next to an estuary. Dan drove right to the end so there was literally a few rocks separating us from the big waves. Breakfast when we get home will be so dull!
It was time to head North, but first we needed to find a payphone to extend our camper van rental, having had confirmation from the travel agency that we could delay our flights by a couple of weeks, our first extension! Unfortunately our particular van needed to be back in Auckland shortly after our return date to Christchurch but the hire company were able to offer a similar vehicle for Spring prices due to the amount of time we will have hired for - result! It wouldn't be too much of a pain stopping by in Christchurch and might give us the opportunity to explore more of the East Coast.
We headed back to Picton and drove along Queen Charlotte Drive, which was a very narrow and incredibly windy road along the edge of the Queen Charlotte Sound. My, what views! Every turn in the road gave us completely different pictures, it was just beautiful. We stopped in every lay by possible just to appreciate the natural beauty and we were truly blown away. The weather wasn't fantastic, but it was dry and the cloud broke every now and then.
After about an hour we turned off this road onto an even smaller one and by the time we reached Portage, where the Queen Charlotte Track met the road, Dan was feeling very car sick. So was I even though I was driving so we were very grateful to stop. After a quick lunch we set off along the track for a rather steep 90 minute walk. Unfortunately the weather turned pretty miserable and mist descended, forcing us to turn back early as we really didn't want to drive through this weather. The scenery before this point again was just magnificent and we were definitely in love!
We drove back to the main road and headed towards Nelson, stopping in Havelock to climb several steep steps to a wonderful look out point. Fortunately the mist and rain were heading in the opposite direction to us and the cloud broke more frequently casting sunlight over the turquoise water changing the colours every second. It was a drive we won't be forgetting in a hurry. We came into Nelson late afternoon and found a campsite right next to the beach. We had a chilled evening and ate our yummy left overs before watching some Glee on our DVD player.
- comments