Golden Bay and Nelson

Phew, finally caught up with the blog.  I am writing about Sunday and it is Sunday.  This morning when we got up and moving we booked our next hostel in Nelson (a lot of them were full because it is Easter break and everyone is off from school).  We made sandwiches for lunch and left.  First stop, Abel Tasman National Park.

The great walk of Abel Tasman starts (or ends, depending on the direction you are walking) in Wainui bay, which was a half hour drive from our hostel so off we went.  It had stopped raining when we left the hostel and we could see a little bit of blue sky and were hopeful.

Ten minutes after starting along the track the skies opened and started pouring.  Even though we were wearing raincoats we were soaked within a minute.  So we turned around and walked back to the car where we waited for 20 minutes before ceding defeat.  Today was not going to be a dry day.

We skipped Pupu Springs (the other attraction we were going to see in Golden Bay) and headed over Takaka hill to Nelson instead (about 2 hours away).  It was a reasonably nice drive once we were off the winding mountainous roads and the rain let up some.  We ate our sandwiches in Nelson in the car in a parking lot.  The Nelson library was somehow open and had free internet so we spent a couple hours in the warm and dry library surfing the internet.

We checked into our non-YHA hostel (only available beds were in a private room), ate second lunch (leftover stir fry) and walked out to the beach in the drizzly weather for a half hour or so. There were quite a few people kite-surfing at the beach. After walking down the beach for a while we came home and made dinner (burritos).

This hostel was much more like staying in someone's house than any other hostel we've stayed at.  There was only one kitchen and one of the owners was making Easter dinner all day.  This made it a bit awkward to make dinner as we always felt like we were in the way or imposing.  It also seemed that the owners had either friends or family over to share in Easter dinner which hung out in the hostel's only living room.  But everyone was friendly.