Road Trip Through New Zealand: Nelson to Havelock to Blenheim

     We explored Nelson by taking a walk: the Centre of New Zealand walk to be precise. We got lost and veered way off track, so the 1 hour (return) walk turned into a whole afternoon, but we felt pretty good having done that kind of exercise. We did not do much in Nelson to be honest.

Walking around in Nelson

View of Nelson from the top of the Centre of New Zealand hill

Centre of New Zealand

     From Nelson we drove out to the sticks to look for Butcher's Flat, which is a Department of Conservation (D.O.C.) camp. Unfortunately, we never found it. It felt like we had been driving forever looking for it but after the other night's getting stuck in a ditch (which also took place in the boonies and in the dark), we decided to turn back. We were actually getting rather scared because the road became really narrow with gravel and it was the sort of scene from a movie where a crazy person would jump out of the bush and murder us with an axe; perhaps my imagination is too vivid for a normal human being. Needing to turning the car around was making Amanda panic. Since the night we got stuck in that silly ditch any kind of "technical" driving maneuvers were done by myself. Maybe I'm a mean person but I always thought it was hilarious when she panicked over the simplest of things.
     After turning around it didn't take too long to find a camp area but the one we stayed at charged dumb amounts of money and the owner was a grumpy mid-life crisis kind of lady. I realize that Amanda I look younger then we are, but she was a nut job to put it nicely. We went out and bought a few supplies, like a portable gas cooker stove top and some canned foods; this obviously made our trip feel more like a camping experience but also helped to save money. Keep in mind that we obviously were not eating great meals despite the fact that Amanda is a chef.
     The next morning we left Havelock and headed to Blenheim. When we got to Blenheim, it was still relatively early so we found the Information Centre and booked an all-day wine tour (10a-5pm) and organized a camp ground for the next night (we figured we would be super drunk that neither of us could do any kind of driving. But for the rest of that day we hadn't made any set plans so  we went to a café and walked around town to kill some time. We ended up eating a good dinner that night at an Indian/Malaysian restaurant and then we saw A Million Ways to Die in the West at the cinema. Finally, we ended our night in our car but we both had a difficult time sleeping in this parking lot because there were lights all over the place! At least there was a public bathroom in the parking lot but I have never seen such a high tech one in my life. It was very bizarre. You had to push a button and the door would open, then it would close and lock itself and automatically gave you a set amount of time. A voice would come on and narrate everything, like "door open/close", "door locked", "toilet flushing". The first time I heard the voice was when it was flushing and it seriously scared me; I don't like having a voice in my bathroom while I'm doing my business. If you finished before the allotted time then you could push a button and the door opened, if not, then once the time ran out the door automatically opened, not too good if you're one of those people who fall asleep on the can.
     We did the All-Day Highlight Wine Tours of Blenheim - Marlborough, where we visited about 10 vineyards. Amanda and I were the only two who were doing the all-day tour so the first half of the day was basically a private tour. We visited numerous vineyards and at each we sampled 5-6 glasses of wine. We ate lunch at one, where we were able to sample our wines while washing down our delicious foods. After lunch when our guide came back, she had with her two people who were joining for the afternoon part of the tour; they were honeymooners. Amanda and I definitely felt like alcoholics because by 2pm we were both feeling the wines and could not form any new memories. Thank goodness for my habit of writing things down at the end of each day before going to sleep, and for keeping pamphlets otherwise I would have no idea where we went or what we tasted. By the end of our day tour, we had visited: Lawson's Dry Hills, Wither Hills, Villa Maria, Seresin Estate, Framingham, Wairau River, Giesen, and Saint Clair.

Wither Hills

Wither Hills

     









     Oddly enough our tour ended at a chocolate factory and then our guide was nice enough to recommend a restaurant not too far from our car so we ate there. Most of this day is a blur and we were so drunk by dinner that I didn't even remember ordering my food but someone the waitress miraculously knew exactly what I wanted and brought it out to me. We someone managed to walk back to our car but I have no idea how as I am certain we were both struggling to stand up. You may be thinking that we had a late night but that was not the case at all; we went to bed at 6:30pm. At 9pm I woke up feeling like crap, pacing around outside trying to get as much fresh oxygen into my system as possible and eventually went to bed desperately trying to ignore the terrible drunken state I was in.

Seresin Estate

Road Trip through New Zealand: Franz Josef to Nelson to Abel Tasman

            Once we got to Nelson we thought we would head into Abel Tasman National Park to find a nice and cheap campground. It was late but neither Amanda or I were tired but we probably should have stopped as it’s much more difficult to find your way around a place you are unfamiliar with in the dark. We ended up taking a wrong turn and were looking for a good place to pull over for the night. Amanda decided to drive up a gravel hill (even though I thought it was a bad idea), and at the top of the hill she starts to panic because she can’t see a safe/comfortable exit, so she starts reversing (not her forte). All of a sudden we end up stuck in a ditch on a 45° angle. She makes some silly requests, “can you get us out?” and “can’t we just pick the car up and move it?” I’m not friends with a dumb person, she just isn’t very competent when it comes to anything about cars, like engines, driving skill, navigation, or the weight of a car apparently. All this happens at around 11p.m.

            Amanda, being the unprepared/unorganized person she is, has no AA or any roadside assistance of any kind and she also can’t seem to find her phone. Luckily, I expected something like this to happen eventually and had two fully charged batteries for my phone. However, we were stuck in the middle of a national park in a location without any cell reception. She took my phone and walked around to find reception and called every phone number she could think of to get someone to help us find a towing company. The only person who would help was AA, but we would be charged quite a bit because she wasn’t a member, it was a holiday long-weekend (we were unaware of this at the time) and it was now after 2:30a.m.

            After a lot of negotiation back and forth, and after being stuck in the cold for over three hours, a man finally came and towed us out, and I was the one to drive for the rest of that night (with an expired license I might add). Once I got us into the next town, I parked the car in a parking lot of a public park and we slept there.

            We woke up much later than usual the next morning and headed back into Abel Tasman National Park. We got all the way into the park and after parking the car, Amanda notices that she forgot her purse, so back into town it was. We checked every stop we had made, a restroom, the gas station, etc – nada. It was then time to file a police report and hope that the person to find it would be decent. Thankfully, I had taken her passport from her at the beginning of the trip for safekeeping so at least she didn’t lose that (she had lost it in Ireland one week before her departure – she missed that flight and it was a hassle).

            We headed back into the park to kill time and enjoy the sunshine. We spent most of the afternoon at a yatch club, admiring the pretty boats and the water. We finally decided to leave and after having just passing through town the police call us, someone has found her purse and left it at a bakery near the park we were at. We turned around and picked it up – nothing was missing. We headed into Nelson and stayed at a nice hotel with a jet-bathtub and all the fancy fixings. After the kind of night and day we had, we needed some spoiling. We slept in a fabulous bed and felt very well rested and relaxed the next day – perfect for yet another day on the road.

View from Hawke's Lookout