Day 24: Takaka

Today was a good lazy day.  After breakfast, Molly and Sarah went for a walk around town and down to the local beach.  I bummed around a bit, hit up the grocery store for dinner things, and tried to catch up on blogging (unsuccessfully, as I was still a week behind).

I couldn't resist this photo, though.  She's pretty adorable, no?

I went for a nice long run to get to know the area and use a bit of energy.  I discovered an area of Karst limestone that is called "The Labyrinth".  The cracks there run roughly at 90 degree angles, and form a simple maze.

Also, this area has been switching from sheep ranching to dairy for the last few years, so you are just as likely to see black and white dairy cows as sheep.  This is a shame, as sheep smell quite a bit better than dairy cows, and to be honest, are pretty adorable, too.

See?

After the run, dinner. There are a few other Americans and a few Canadians at Kiwiana currently.  They may not still be around come Thanksgiving, but if they are in the area, we are starting to scheme an epic Thanksgiving feast.

Day 23: Takaka

Takaka is a little town of 1,500 people nestled into a valley between the Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks.  It has a neat little shopping strip, with a couple pubs, a bunch of artist studios, a bike shop, a hardware store, and other little odds and ends places you'd expect from an almost on the beach town.

It also has a tiny little shop that is selling hand painted cards that Sarah makes.

Which makes us happy.

We didn't really have plans for the day, so we took in town a bit, and checked out the grocery store.  You gotta eat sometime, after all.

Remember how beer is really expensive? Well, it turns out there's a way around that.  Even the grocery stores sell brew-your-own supplies.  One can of malt extract with hop extract in it, and a 5 kilo bag of dextrose, and viola!  You can make your own beer.

You can also buy flavor bottles, so rather than spend lots and lots of money on nice booze, you can just buy a bottle of vodka and pour one of these babies in.  Instant gin/whiskey/rum/what have you.

There is a distillery in town as well.  I will have to check it out sometime.

The Kiwiana Hostel has a pile of...well...mostly functional bikes, so we borrowed a few and went to "The Grove".  It's a cool little nature preserve, with lots of funky trees, and limestone formations known as Karst.

Which Molly likes to climb.

This crevice is a great example of Karst formations.

A small crack in a limestone layer is slowly eaten away by rain (slightly acidic), and eventually forms massive crevices.

Sometimes that lead to impressive views.  Those mountains shrouded in clouds are part of the Kahurangi National Park.

A nifty little platform jutting out from the limestone, about 30 feet up from a sheep pasture below.

Part of the platform.

We have heard that there is a lot of good rock climbing around here.  From looking at these rocks, and I can see why.  Lots of little groves, and the rock is solid and not crumbly at all.

Some massive roots growing down from the top of the rocks into the crevice.

Hi Sarah!  The eating away of the limestone happens in all sorts of funny angles, so you are always seeing interesting formations.

We then rode to Pohara Beach, down the road a little further.

This is high tide.  When the tide goes out all the way, the beach is probably half a mile of sand and tide pools before you get to the water.

A self service, 24-7, raw milk dispenser.  The machine on the left will sell you a clean glass bottle, the machine on the right dispenses milk.  This is about halfway between Pohara and Takaka, and one of a handful around the South Island.  It's about $10 NZ for 4 liters of milk, so roughly $5.50 for a gallon.  Not bad, and the milk is delicious.

It's still getting cold at night, and is pretty windy, which we are told is strange for the area.  People blame that on El Nino for now, and we'll see how long it continues.  It is only early Spring here, so with any luck it'll get warmer the longer we're here.  Christmas is the beginning of Summer for Kiwis, and this area gets crowded quickly with vacationers.  For now, we are borrowing a comforter to use in our tent, over our sleeping bags.

Day 22: Hitch To Takaka

There we were, fresh off the boat, so to speak.  We're on a new island, we have no place to stay lined up, and we're just looking for a ride.

So we walk to the nearest crossroads leading out of town, and Molly writes "Nelson" on her white board.  Our luck runs hot, and 2 minutes later, Neil stops and yells "Where are you headed?"

It turns out that Neil is from Montana, very close to Darby, a tiny tiny hamlet called Sula that we had biked through.  He moved to New Zealand 20 years before to get away from many parts of the States he didn't care for: Taxes, Government Control, and Gun Violence.  He now runs an Irish Pub and Pizza Joint in Picton, where he picked us up.   He gave us a ride for 25 or so km, to the next cross roads, pointed us in the right direction, and wished us luck.

So the sign came out again, and we are still doing awesome.  5 minutes later Dave stops and scoops us up.  Dave is from Motueka, which is even further along than Nelson towards Takaka, our final goal.  He had spent the last month on the North Island attending to his recently deceased father's estate, and also spent some time helping his sister fix up her house.  Dave turns out to be a man of many talents and much useful information.  He told us about the wine area we were in, the forests and tress we drove by:

The way that trees were grown and harvested.  He talked about hunting Possum (an Australian breed that is highly invasive in New Zealand even though it is now endangered in Australia).  Evidently, you can make $120 NZ per kilo of possum fur you can trap, which is roughly 12-15 possum.  It's pretty nice fur, so all of you: if you want a fur jacket, get New Zealand possum fur.  They need to get rid of them anyway, and it's not farmed inhumanly.  I'm going to try to get something with the fur before we leave.

Dave wouldn't let us even pay for gas along the way, I think he just like the company.  He did take some chocolate that we had wisely bought before leaving Wellington.

A forested area, and the machines at work.  I forget what the machine is called, but there is an attachment for cranes that can grab, measure, cut, and strip pine logs in a matter of seconds.  It's rather impressive to watch.

And here we are in Nelson.  Dave, being the awesome Kiwi that he is, offered to take us on to Motueka, which we gladly accepted.

A pit stop in Motueka, and I even got my afternoon espresso.  Molly gets her sign ready, and we get ready to hit the road again.  Isn't the sign great?

Getting out of Motueka took a series of small rides.  A woman whose name we did not catch, but who was a refugee from Zimbabwe, gave us a ride to the edge of town.  A young man named Nick gave us another ride a few more kilometers to the last turn off before the road only went on to Takaka, up the very understatedly named Takaka Hill (with a pass elevation of roughly 2500 feet.

And lastly, by this hop field:

We got our last ride of the day, from Peter.  Peter is from Christchurch, but he and his wife have a second home in the Golden Bay area, where Takaka is.

Good bye hops, I hope to see more of you.

Up the hill we go!

The road is extraordinarily windy, and goes up relentlessly.

But like everywhere else in this blessed country, it's still beautiful.

A view from the top.

And then, down.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE......

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....

eeeeeeeeeeeeee......gasp.....eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Those mountains are in the Kahurangi National Park, where we hope to do some hiking.  

Peter, also went above and beyond as a ride giver, and dropped us right at the Kiwiana Hostel, where Molly's friend Sarah is currently residing.  She was not expecting us for at least one more day, so when we managed to make it to Takaka from Picton in 6 hours, she was pleasantly surprised to see us, to say the least.  

Takaka is a cute little town of 1,500 people, in the middle of a valley between two national parks, and the word picturesque doesn't begin to do it credit.

There will be more pictures and stories from this area, as we plan on staying for a while.  But our first day of hitching rides went pretty well.  We'll see if our luck continues.