It took around three and a half hours to drive from Kaikoura to Nelson, a place with the ugliest church tower I’ve ever seen. Silvia and I treated ourselves to a delicious steak dinner in town.
On Tuesday, March 6, we drove to Kaiteriteri, which had a glorious beach with golden sand and clear water. However, with the sun hidden by clouds, it didn’t look much like the postcards, and the sandflies started eating us alive despite the insect repellent in which we had drenched ourselves.
We took the water taxi, or speedboat, to Bark Bay, which is halfway up the east coast of Abel Tasman National Park and inaccessible by car. On the way, we stopped to look at some seal pups which were two to three months old. The 6.4km walk from Bark Bay to Torrent Bay, through the bush, was supposed to take around two and a quarter hours, but Silvia set a fast pace and it took just an hour and a half, even though we stopped to take photos several times. We had to wait an hour and a quarter for the water taxi to pick us up, so we passed the time by playing on a swing, wading out to a rocky island and splashing around.
None of the backpacker accommodation in Kaiteriteri had any vacancies, so we decided to drive over the mountains to Golden Bay. When we reached the YHA hostel in Takaka, we were told there was only one bed left. However, just out of town was the River Inn. It was built in around 1880 – and you could tell. But it had plenty of space, and that was all that mattered by that point.
For future reference, the part of Golden Bay that we saw was more grey than gold.