Over the Takaka Hill

Apologies for the delay in transmission over the last few days. We have spent a magical 4 days at Totaranui, where there is not enough signal to be able to get onto the internet.
Here’s what we’ve been up to while we've been away!

Actually I didn’t sleep very well… I guess being a weekend, the locals were keen to party and there was a thumping bass playing for a couple of hours after we retired for the night. Added to that, three cars turned up in the evening and decided that right next door to us would be a good place to pitch their tents. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that two of the three were packed up and gone before 7am the next morning, and each had developed at least 25 doors (all of which had to be slammed shut) before they were ready to depart!
Today we took on the massive Takaka Hill – nearly 800m to the summit and the climb seemed to go on and on. We made it to the township of Takaka where we did a big supermarket shop as we’re intending to spend quite a few days at Totaranui. We carried on round the coast to Pohara, where we overnighted at the NZMCA site near the marina. It was blowing a gale (these pictures were taken the next morning). Charlie spent quite some time talking to a chap in the bus next to us who gave him some tips about where to fish and what has worked for him… he’s looking forward to trying it out!Read more