It’s Thursday morning in the jungle. Our little broken beak Weka bird, who has been haunting our doorstep for two days is gone, replaced by one with a full beak. We suspect a territorial dispute was settled last night. Today we leave our rain forest retreat in Te Nikau to drive north, then turn east at Westport into the Buller Gorge where highway 6 follows rivers through valleys carpeted with farm and pastureland. We pause for lunch in Murchison, site of a disastrous earthquake in 1929, but now rebuilt as a pleasant little town. The roads continue to be in excellent condition and we realize that this is in part due to low traffic volume throughout the South Island. The landscape slowly changes and we now see fruit orchards and hop farms. Dianne gets way too excited at a roadside fruit stand where she buys a big bag of precious looking red pears for NZ$2, paid into the “honesty box.” We stay on the scenic byway until reaching Motueka, a busy tourist town and gateway for the Abel Tasman National Park. We find the New World market there and update our provisions, then go a bit further north until reaching our accommodation, Foley’s Creek, a former pottery gallery renovated to a holiday home. The setting is a tree dotted pasture with a year round creek, fruit orchards and working farms nearby. We meet the owner, Alex, who shows us around. The “Gallery” has big rooms, high ceilings, very expensive halogen gallery lighting strung overhead, display cubes for a coffee table and features a floor to ceiling tree in the great room. It will be great to stretch out here for a few days.
We take a short drive to the Kaiteriteri, a beach town on Tasman Bay, where we make reservations for a water taxi cruise into Abel Tasman Park on Friday. Ed and Colleen will do some kayaking with a guide on the bay, while Phil and Dianne will take the taxi to the north end of the reserve, and hike south along the Coastal Track and meet up with Ed and Colleen at a designated beach later in the day. The plan is to hike south together to a taxi pickup point and end up in Kaiteriteri at the end of the day. We are assured it’s a good trail and not difficult, (HA!)
Anyway, on our drive back to Foley Creek we stop at another produce stand and buy great New Zealand apples, more pears (?!) two melons, tomatoes and cucumbers. That’s a lot of produce, but we are up for the challenge. Before going back to the holiday home, we follow Alex’s suggestion and drive to the road’s end where there is a small state park, named Riwaka River Resurgence. Here the river reemerges out of a cliffside after having gone underground several kilometers. The river then feeds into two crystal clear, deep blue pools and down several small waterfalls before leaving the park area. What a jewel!
It’s been a long, busy day. We finish off with homemade pizza, a local white wine and a toast to great produce!
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