Funny Farm

Trip Start Sep 01, 2008
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Trip End Mar 2009


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Where I stayed
Autumn Farm
(Takaka hotels)

Flag of New Zealand  , South Island,
Friday, October 17, 2008

Golden Bay Farmstay. After driving over a very steep and twisty mountain pass we came upon Autumn Farm where we spent a fews days in the mad but friendly world of Peter & Pete  the hosts, which included eating Howard their friendly cow that had been turned into sausages, eggs from the chuck house, jams from the orchards, salad leaves from the vegetable patch all finished off with our own hot bath under the stars heated from logs chopped down from the woods.
Takaka was a modern day Riseholme, very Mapp & Lucia, a world where no one has a real job everyone is either a therapist, an artist or odd job man. The same money changes hands everyday between themselves. Very alternative - but then it is cut off from the rest of the already isolated S Island by being on a 100km dead end road only accessible over the horrible 791m high Takaka hill complete with its winding switch back single track road.
Being artists of course the town was given a brief to design a monument to honour Abel Tasman the dutch sailor who discovered New Zealand by landing in Golden Bay in 1647 and boy did they put their consolidated creative efforts into effect!!
We spent a day hiking part of the Abel Tasman National Park catching a water taxi into the park and dodging showers before timing the tides so we could cross the river estuaries - it was still waist deep and freezing cold even at low tide something a group of elederly Japanese ladies did not appreciate as they rolled up their trousers to just above their knees -  oh how we laughed knowing that the water had reached our waists!! 
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