21 May PUNAKAIKI - NELSON

When we woke up at 7am, the whole house was still asleep.  Tina, another Taiwanese girl who worked at the hostel was making bread in the kitchen when we were having breakfast.  To exchange for free accommodation, Kiwi and Tina worked 4 hours a day where their main duty included making bread and muffin plus cleaning the 5 rooms in this 2-storey hostel.  Well, many youngsters ( you must be under 30 years old to entitle a holiday working visa ) use this way to tour around New Zealand.  You work half a day to get free stay and food, and you still have half a day to explore the town you work in until you move to the next destination. 

I noticed that time flies when we were at New Zealand.  It was already after 2 1/2 hours from the moment we woke up when we left Te Nikau Retreat.  I did not remember there was any moment that we laid back.  We were just packing our light backpack (the large baggage were all left in the car), eating breakfast and taking some photos with Tina and Kiwi. That's all. I guess this is what people say when you are happy, time flies.
From left, Kiwi, me and Tina

Our journey from Punakaiki to Nelson took 4 hours.  I drove from Punakaiki to Cape Foulwind at Tauranga Bay where the seal colony is.  The road was winding at 15 - 30 degrees.  So, you can imagine it was then Bernard's turn to suck the pickled pineapple throughout the journey.  

I was very excited and was running all my way to the seal colony.  I had only seen real seal in aquatic centre but not in their natural habitat.  However, the rocks where the seals were was quite far away from the viewing deck. Since the seal were at the same colour as the rocks, it took me some time to spot the seal. I kept asking Bernard where is the seal, while he kept answering :" Nah, they are all there, so many of them, you can't see them?".  Finally I manage to 'see' them when I calm myslef down.  There were about 20 fur seals, most of them were sun bathing and a few pups were seen feeding on their parents. There was not much activity.  I was quite disappointed to see such a quiet scene after having fantasy of them jumping around or flapping their flippers, like what most of us had been seen in the circus or Disney's cartoon. We stayed for half an hour to wait for more activities from them, but the seals did not seemed to entertain us.
Can you spot the seal on the rocks?

We headed to Westport, the nearest town from Tauranga Bay to filled our tank before we drove to Murchinson.  Murchinson is a very quiet old town with very few tourists.  We had lamb shank pie and beef lasagna, which both turned up to be not suitable for Asian taste buds.

Lamb shank pie

Beef lasagna

From Murchinson to Nelson, the West Coast scenery of Nipah tree and rocky coastal road changed to Canterbury pine forest. The colourful autumn leaves made the scenery quite a nice picture. 

We finally reached Nelson YHA at 3:30 pm.  Nelson is a big city with quite a number of fresh food stalls, outdoor sport gears outlets, shoe warehouses and cafes. This is indeed an ideal stop to stock up cheap fresh food (inclusive of Asian food ingredients)  and outdoor gear before starting your journey in South Island.  But, instead we had made it our last stop in South Island.  Anyway, never try never learn, we know what to do next time.
 Nelson YHA
Hallway to the rooms
Our tiny room
Kitchen
Dining area

After we checked in at YHA, we took a stroll to the tranquilly beautiful Cathedral before the sun set.  There was a mixture of feelings.  Nelson marked our last stop in South Island, I reckoned that our journey has passed 2/3 of its length.  What lies ahead is another 2 big cities in North Island, Wellington and Auckland.  The tranquillity, slow pace and the great scale of nature is what we would miss the most.
Cathedral in Nelson town
Nelson town

   

Back in the hostel, we arranged and packed our big luggage.  Since we will return our car and board the Interislander Ferry at Picton tomorrow, we do not have the luxury to carry everything with us anymore.  All the left over food stayed in the hostel's free food section.  We have also donated a shrunk T-shirt, a sweater and a pouch at the donation bin. Food donated to the free food section in the hostel
Sweater donated by Bernard

We finally finished arranging everything by 7:30 pm.  While we were heading out for dinner, Bernard noticed that he had lost one side of his possum fur glove.  We sought through the room and the car but could not find it.  It was a pity that one side of the glove had to stay in its place of origin ( he purchased this pair of glove during his first visit to New Zealand about 10 years ago ); while the other side had to follow the owner back to Malaysia.  

Dinner at a Hong Kong restaurant was awful. This meal had again made us miss the tasty Thai  food in Queenstown.  Hopefully we could get good food in Wellington tomorrow. 

 Catching up with my travel journal in the living room