Bakers Lodge Motueka

... out of the plane, after that it was just like wind in my face, but no stomach jerkers I just enjoyed the scenery around me. After falling for a while, Scruffy held my head back again, this time because the parachute had deployed. My body swung up and then it was just riding on the wind for the rest. At this point I was kind of craving more...It was AWESOME. Suddenly Scruffy asked me if I get motion sickness...I was confused, but I replied with a simple "No."...We then started spiralling ...

... pueblo hay gasolinera,
no? No siempre, os lo digo yo. Aun no hemos acabado de decidir si el problema
ha sido que los pueblos no tienen gasolinera o que los puntitos del mapa
no son exactamente pueblos, sino grupos de menos de 15 casas. Cuando al
cabo de 80 km se enciende la temida lucecita de la gasolina nos paramos
en una de estas casas y nos informan que la siguiente gasolinera esta
a mas de 60 km siguiendo la carretera ...

... from a band who are still touring! From the black album I just followed the alphabet through the Dark Side of the Moon; the Definitive Simon and Garfunkel; and the Game by Queen. Whilst the last three may seem to have little in common do represent three of the most dominant forces in the British album charts over the 70s and 80s having albums that spent between 8 and 9 years (yes pop pickers, years) in the charts. Even the glorious Beatles cant compare with that.

... br>
After a eventful tiring day we were happy to just chill out that evening and were thankful of an early night!

The following morning Celia and Lee went for a run along the beach, however it was really difficult due to a steep slope towards the sea so we didn’t last out very long and ran along the track alongside the seafront instead.

We spent the majority of that day driving south. We made a stop off in Takaka where we did some ...

... over Christmas break, when it holds up to 1,500 campers; boaters; and fishermen in its grounds during the warm season, but fortunate for me held only about a half dozen other hikers this day - and venturing over to Goat Bay for a relaxing picnic lunch, it was time to take another water taxi back down the full length of the Park's coastline to return to my camper. With few other passengers to pick up, Justin, my "cabbie", steered our boat ...

... 25 a night, which was the most i had paid and it didnt even include any freebies but it was really nice! we went for a walk off into takaka around the little street with some pretty funky hippie shops and discovered that on saturday there was a mardi gras going on....sounded pretty cool so we decided to stay two extra nights on the fri and sat to go to this mardi gras! good decisison in the end! that night after we had a lovely bbq cooked by none other than ...

... sun went down. In the morning an 8am pickup for the Golden Bay tour bus. This is the company run by Kerry, and some of us had opted to do this trip. Others went walking, horseriding, sailing and kayaking. The bus took us up into the hills for a look over some of the Lord of the Rings countryside and around to Golden Bay itself. Past this, we lay on a beach for a while, but the wind was very strong and the recent storms had made the beach unsafe to swim with ...

... and nearly went over the edge. But my lightning reactions saved her from being mashed potato at the bottom! OK, so it wasn't actually that dramatic. She did slip and could have had a nasty fall, but there was a tree which she tried to grab which would easily have stopped her. However, I intervened by grabbing her arm, which bent it round the tree and nearly snapped it off at the elbow! I think it's best if I don't interfere next time! After our adventure, we returned to our ...