Golden Bay

After a very long, hot shower and some breakfast, we were back on the road headed North towards Golden Bay. Our first stop was Te Waikoropupu or as it's more commonly called Pupu Springs. Pupu Springs is supposedly some of the clearest waters in the Southern Hemisphere with 63m of visibility. To give you a comparison, drinking water is around 83m.

To get to the springs was a short 10 minute walk through the forest which was quite pretty. The spring itself however was clear, I'll give it that, but it wasn't anywhere near as impressive as I thought it would be. After a couple of obligatory photos, we headed back to the van and set off to our next stop, the Pupu Hydro Walkway, which was only 4km up the road.

When we visited the information centre in Nelson, the lady said that the Pupu Hydro Walkway was her favourite walk ever so we thought we had better not miss it. The 2 hour round trek takes you around a fully working hydro dam. The first bit involved a bit of a steep climb but when we got to the top we walked alongside the entire waterway system. At times we had to walk along a thin wooden walkway hanging over the side of the waterway which kept it interesting. Despite the drizzle, it was actually a very enjoyable walk and at the end you could see into the power station which was pretty cool. Here we had some lunch before heading further North to Farewell Spit.

Farewell Spit is the long thin narrow bit at the top of the West Coast of the South Island and if nothing else just a photo opportunity. There are a few walks you can do here but the weather had seriously deteriorated by this point as we didn't fancy getting soaked again, so after walking up to the lookout we jumped back in the van and headed back down south.

Although we covered a lot of miles, the driving doesn't bother us at all as there is always such picturesque scenery. The South Island really is beautiful. We even spotted a baby calf on route that had literally just been born. We could tell this as the mother was quite happily chowing down on the placenta!

We are conscious that we only have a couple of weeks left in the van now so want to make the most of it. Tomorrow is forecast to be a sunny day so not wanting to spend the day driving we tackled most of the driving that evening and stopped off in a free campsite on the side of the road.Read more