Nelson - January 26 to February 2, 2007

After the long drive up the west coast, we spent a week in Nelson. Our original plan was to use this as a base and explore along the north coast of the South Island up to Golden Bay and Cape Farewell, but we discovered that the roads were more challenging and the trip around Abel Tasman National Park a lot longer than we had bargained on. So we ended up playing a fair bit of golf and enjoying the mostly pleasant weather in the Nelson area. It was nice to settle into a place for 7 days and have the facilities of a reasonable sized town.

We stayed in a basement apartment that the owner called "Arapiki" (I never did figure out why). It was reasonably located and had wireless Internet which worked part of the time. We golfed at the Nelson Golf Club (nothing special) and at GreenAcres Golf Club (a little more interesting). GreenAcres had only one power cart which we had to arrange for in advance. This old clunker had a 2-stroke engine and smelled like an outboard motor, but it did get us around the course. We nearly got seasick because of the ripples on some of the fairways though! See two shots of it below.

I didn't take as many pictures in Nelson because after Queenstown and the West Coast, we didn't see anything that compelling. The pictures below include GreenAcres Golf Club (and the power cart), the beach at Kaiteriteri, and some shots from the road on the way to Abel Tasman National Park.

Next stop: Transit to the North Island