Nelson Lakes Homestay St. Arnaud

We have just arrived back after our Easter holidays. We flew down to the south Island again, this time to see the northern half of it. Our adventures began on the 10th April when we flew out of Auckland at 7.30am in the morning (a very silly time to fly if you've had very little sleep due to going out the previous night!) We arrived in Christchurch and took the tram through the city and headed on a gondola up Mount Cavendish. There were amazing views over Christchurch ...

After I had a wonderful two weeks with Bill and Leitu Jackson on there farm my next destination was the Abel Tasman national park via the Wangapeka trail, this is basically a 4 day walk in the bush. The basic idea is that you do a set walk everyday and spend the night in a hut along the route. There is far to much to say about the walk ...

What fantastic weather! Six days of hiking and not a drop of rain. We started off in St. Arnaud, a beautiful mountain/lake town that has yet to go touristy (which limits where one can eat though...). The tramp took along the valley along a lake (I cannot begin to spell the Maori name, and do not have my tramping book with me) and then slowly up along the Travers River mostly through beech forests. We spent the first night in an old hut that was narrowly missed by ...

... and then the Abel Tasman coastline. We found a lovely campsite in Kaiteriteri to base ourselves for the next two nights. Unfortunately we decided to risk the weather and went on a spectacularly beautiful 23km walk from Bark Bay back to Marahau - the first or last part of the Abel Tasman tramping route, and evidently the most beautiful. Unfortunately for us, we could be best described as very wet and uncomfortable, and were grateful for a ...

After Abel Tasman I went south. On the way I made a short stop at Nelson Lakes, spectifically at lake Rotoiti, the smaller of the two. The lake & surrounding mountains were so amazing that I had to go up one of them to see the view from above. So I found a short walk ...

... being held prisoner, forced to write a new book...) We came to Buller Gorge Swingbridge. It was now about 6:30pm. The swingbridge office was all padlocked and closed up but the side gate was open so we walked through and while David walked over the very shaky 110m long wooden suspension bridge, I stayed to keep an eye on the car or in case anyone was wondering what we were up to. David returned shortly with a big beaming smile so the surrounding mountainous views obviously agreed with ...

... offer decided to stay and take full adavantage of the entire Japanese experience - from Massage to dinner to Yakutas, private hot bath and Okonomyaki for breakfast, all the staff were Japanese - where had they come from and why choose to be here??

... die amper tijd voor mij weet vrij te maken. Ik laat mijn rugzak achter in de hostel en besluit meteen maar een wandeling te doen. Ik besluit de St. Arnauds Range track te volgen naar 'parachute rocks' en een stukje verder te gaan tot aan de 'ridge' waar je uitzicht heb tot over het hele meer. Woensdag 28 Mei De avond ervoor heb ik twee anderen ontmoet die een vergelijkbaar plan hadden als ik om naar St ...

... my little diatribe on the Zen of motorcycling, all brought about by my ride through the native forest. It was just a great sensory experience. I stopped off at Maruia Falls, about 20km from Murchison. A van load of teenage kayakers turned up soon after and a couple of them got the bright idea to paddle over the falls, so I stayed to watch and video them; that was quite fun, and I got some good slow-motion video which I am going to ...

So in the interest of sharing the work with the general public of Nelson, we informed the local newspaper, "The Nelson Mail", that an amazing work of art had just been completed, and that they would be fools if they did not send a reporter post haste. Actually, Bev(the owner) set it up, I just took a shower because I looked like **** and smelled like terpentine after three ...