Sunday 1^st February

Spent most day at Te Papa museum. Recently built, this is the national museum, brilliantly constructed and really interesting displays on geology, natural history and immigration..

Monday 2^nd February

Up early to catch the ferry to South Island. Hadn't realised this isn't like a normal ferry. After crossing the Cook Strait, it dives towards a mountain wall which opens up to reveal a passageway, the Tory passage, leading into Queen Charlotte Sound. Almost like cruising through the fiords of Norway.

Drove through breathtaking scenery from Picton towards Nelson, then over a marble mountain range down to Takaka in Golden Bay. Golden both because it has a gigh annual sunnshine rate, but also because they used to mine gold here.

Found Carlconna House where we are staying and were warmly welcomed by Tony and Cath, our hosts. The house is wooden, totally renovated and dates from 1874, although it was moved once to avoid a railway.

Tuesday 3^nd February

Following Tony's advice and sketchmaps we drive first to the Abel Tasman memorial. This guy should win the prize for not spotting the elephant in the room. He sailed from Mauritius and managed to completely miss Australia, just bumping into Tasmania and New Zealand on his voyage. Then up a valley and across an Indiana Jones style rope bridge to a waterfall. Lunch occurred by a gentle sandy beach followed by a swim and a game of mini-golf. I was not allowed to add up the scores so cannot divulge who won.

Then on to Pupu springs, the largest spring in New Zealand. They have installed and upside down periscope and as the water is so clear, we could watch a diving bird forage underwater and see a big fish swim by.

Wednesday 4th February

Drove westwards to Wharariki beach. From car park you walk through huge dunes and beach has islands of conglomerate with caves that are approachable at low tide. The northernmost has caves right the way through it so that waves that break on the seaward side ripple through about 100m to reappear as bores in the cave mouth on the landward side. One cave also has a thin coal seam in it.

The central island has several rock pools and is home to a colony of seals. We watched a family of mother, father and four cubs playing on the rocks, scrambling up and down into pools and calling to one another.

Then round to Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of South Island, with an impressive sea arch.

Then on to the start of the large Farewell spit, a long sand spit about 20km in length. However looked fairly desolate and rain was coming so we high tailed it back to the little village of Collingwood. As Tony had foretold, home of Rosy Glow chocolates – yum.

As rain decided not to abate, drove eastwards to the Aorere gold fields. An alluvial gold mining area with little now to show of its past. We tramped along tracks for several hours but saw no traces of gold, just an uninviting looking limestone cave deep in the bush. However as we returned along another track, just as we were getting very unsure whether we would ever see the car again, we met a guy walking the same way who confirmed we were on the right track. As we were changing our boots at the car, he came over and showed us a jam jar with water in it. The bottom was covered with the gold flakes he had extracted from one of the streams. Christine estimated he had about 5g of gold, which he said had taken him two days of work. Work apparently consisted of bedding what he called a 'Swiss Box' in a stream, damming around it to get a good current of water flowing though it, then attaching a flexible tube to a suction spigot. The flow through the box produced the suction, probably by the Venturi effect. The sediment passed a series of riffles where the flakes of gold, each several millimetres across, were trapped. He seemed to be inhabiting an old camper van in the car park, prospecting for gold as his living.