Back in mid-January , I was in Aotearoa New Zealand, enjoying a whirlwind roadtrip from Queenstown to Auckland, the beginning of which I detailed in Part One of this post earlier this year. Over the course of the ensuing five-hour drive, we picked up and dropped off a couple of hitchhiking backpackers, ate a reasonably tasty lunch in Geraldine, and lost a hub cap somewhere along the way.
The weather was reasonably sunny and the resulting glare really started to bother my eyes, so we bought a pair of oversize sunglasses at a souvenir shop in Tekapo, which I then proceeded to wear over my regular glasses — it helped, but looked a bit absurd and got kind of heavy.
Perhaps a pair of prescription sunglasses are in order at some future date? Our only real tourist stop was Castle Hill, where we went for a short scramble among the statuesque rock formations:.
The trail was reasonably flat and easy in daylight, and the varied scenery was beautiful, but it became increasingly misty as we approached the summit and the sun went down during our return journey, which made the forested sections of the trail a bit more treacherous and time-consuming. We drove over the pass the next morning and continued northwest to Greymouth and the coast road to Punakaiki, where we stopped for a short stroll around the Pancake Rocks before continuing on to the Buller Gorge and the Nelson area.
We had booked accommodation on tiny Jackett Island, just off the coast of Motueka. Our home for the night was a cozy converted shipping container on the beach with outdoor cooking facilities. These, it turned out, did not include an oven, so we had to modify our dinner plans slightly, but still ended up with a tasty meal, which we enjoyed on the deck overlooking the water.
