Ferm Gully. Jurassic Park. Middle Earth. Narnia. Whatever the name of that planet in Avatar was. Basically it's agreed upon that New Zealand does not look like normal places, at least not in our era. Sure sometimes we drive down a road and think oh! This looks just like the part of the Drive to Saint Joe's where we see all the turtles... if we made the drive 2 million years ago Fred Flinstone style in a car driven by foot power. There's something about the mixture of flat plains next to jagged mountains covered in a strange mix of pines and palm trees, where you see parrots and some miles later a glacier that you have to walk through a rain forest to get to... it's just not 2011.
So as the story goes, after a couple (literally, just 2) days of class between out Napier trip and our trip south I was once again ready for some travel. This time leaving even earlier (seriously, they picked me up at 6:30... the sun had barely come up) we headed to the ferry and after a few wrong turns (including an accidental booking on the ferry going the opposite direction) everything turned out fine and dandy. It was a great ferry ride, though I had to spend a good part of it working on my religion paper I had put off...
We had nice weather on and off, but there started to be a trend to the off. We made the best of it though, and the Villa Backpackers I stayed in my first time to Taupo was as adorable as ever. We spent a quiet evening wandering the water front and made an excellent gourmet hamburger meal of our own.
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| The beach at Nelson |
The next morning we set out in the rain on the topsy turvy road to Nelson. Along the way we happened upon Havelock, the Green Mussel Capitol of the world. It was surprisingly hard to find mussels in the mussel capitol, but after driving on to a loading dock down by the water (where i'm pretty sure the "public" wasn't really allowed) dad managed to talk his way into a giant bag of mussels. About 50. and Green lipped mussels aren't like the pathetic little mussels we have back home. So that night we cooked them up with a glorious garlic butter sauce (how could it go wrong?) and somehow managed to actually eat all of them that had opened. Nelson also had a pretty fantastic farmer's market, but the weather still was not fantastic so after a morning there we trooped back into the warm dry car to head down the coast.
We made it to Greymouth for the night, to stay at the colorful Duke backpackers. Father got in over his head in a game of pool and thanks to an unknown New Zealand tradition had to drop trou since the other team got all their balls in before he made a single one. Everyone cheered and he still loves hostel life, I was upstairs in bed at 8:30 with headphones in and a sleeping mask to block out all those kids and their raucous merrymaking.
On our way to Greymouth we stopped at a seal colony and the pancake rocks, both are much more interesting in picture form than in words, so here they are.
The next morning we set out in the rain on the topsy turvy road to Nelson. Along the way we happened upon Havelock, the Green Mussel Capitol of the world. It was surprisingly hard to find mussels in the mussel capitol, but after driving on to a loading dock down by the water (where i'm pretty sure the "public" wasn't really allowed) dad managed to talk his way into a giant bag of mussels. About 50. and Green lipped mussels aren't like the pathetic little mussels we have back home. So that night we cooked them up with a glorious garlic butter sauce (how could it go wrong?) and somehow managed to actually eat all of them that had opened. Nelson also had a pretty fantastic farmer's market, but the weather still was not fantastic so after a morning there we trooped back into the warm dry car to head down the coast. 
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