The month my family came to NZ : PART 3

For our last week together on this holiday we were going to head west and loop round the top of the South Island, staying in Nelson, and then head back down the east coast. 

Our first step took us over Arthur’s Pass to the West Coast to Hokitika. I’ve visited Hokitika before with Frances and Graeme, and loved it, do I was excited to take mum, Dad and Catriona to see the town as I was sure they’d love it too! I think we particularly loved Jose two days as they were nice and sunny (as we left the rain behind in Springfield.) Although we only stayed one night, due to our tight schedule, we had a nice spacious room at the Pioneer Hotel, which was more of an Inn as the accommodation was attached to a bar. Haha it was perfect and central though and we had a lovely time exploring the jade shops, and researching places for us to eat dinner and breakfast at. 

 

The next day we quickly visited Holitika Gorge in the morning, before hitting that magnificent west coast road up towards Charleston. We stopped at Punakaiki on the way to look at the pancake rocks, and again it was wonderful to see dad’s childlike sense of curiosity and glee in seeing rock formations that he hadn’t seen in person before...and that he didn’t fully understand either (whether he’ll admit that or not! I should mention that most geologists are still unsure of how these weird rocks were formed, not just Dad! 😅) 

(I hav photos but they’re on my camera)

We reached Charleston late afternoon and went to order a take-away pizza for dinner since it was the only good place within miles of our motel! After dinner, just before sunsets we walked down to he local beach to see if we could see any Blue Penguins coming ashore, as this was one of their nesting areas and they’re most commonly seen at dust and dawn. Unfortunately we didn’t see any penguins, just sandflies, so we walk d back home in the dark and watched a LOTR movie that was on tv. :) 

We also visited a local greenstone designers studio and mum and Catriona both got lovely pieces. He was a very interesting guy and had some great stories. Below you can see a picture of Dad nerding out over a beautiful piece of Punamu. 

The next morning we drove up to Nelson via Murchison, where Graeme is based for his job right now. We stayed in Murchison for lunch hen continued up to Nelson as it was about 5 hours driving. The motel we had in Neslson was lovely so we decided to stay here for a couple of days rather than just the one. Nelson is also a great city so we felt we could explore a lot in those two days. 

  

One of our favourit excursions was to a historic reconstruction of a town, an example of what Nelson would have been like in the early 1900s. 

After those two days in Nelson we headed east And then down to coast to Kaikoura. Kaikoura was one of the towns most damaged by the massive earthquake a few years back. Hundreds of buildings were damaged, thousands of people were stuck on a this coast for weeks as massive sections of the road were destroyed. Hug sections of th coast were also raised and a massive amount of sea life was killed. It took a us a good few hours but Cara to take this road as there is loads of construction work still underway. While in Kaikoura we visited the local museum which had a fantastic exhibition on the effects of yh earthquakes locally. It was quite heart wrenching watching all the testimonials, and very scary to see how long it was and yet how quickly that amount of damage happened. 

Back to Springfield in the rain where we met up with Frances and Graeme, who also had a couple of other pals staying with them - Linda and Bob - and we all were staying in Springfield. Bit mental but lots of fun! We had a walk out to castle hill and a few good meals together. 

 

That weekend my family left and headed back to Scotland, back from 25 degree heat to -3!! No thankyou! It was very surreal taking the m back to back the airport and me staying behind!! But all in all it was a fantastic family holiday, I can’t believe it was a full 3 weeks! We had lots of fun, and did a full figure of 8 around the four corners of the South Island. I’m gonna miss them but it will only be another 4 months before I see them again! :) miss you guys!!