Rainy week watching the ferry traffic and dashing out for fun when the skies cleared
Looking at the Marlborough Sounds on a map, you can’t help but want to go there – you can just imagine the blues and greens and endless views in every direction. Though a relatively small area, the interplay of land and sea is so convoluted that the Sounds coastline has 1/5 of the length of New Zealand’s coasts. Per Wikipedia “The Marlborough Sounds are an extensive network of sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. According to Māori mythology, the Sounds are the prows of the sunken wakas of Aoraki.” In addition to Queen Charlotte Sound with Picton at its head, the other main sounds are Pelorus Sound and Kenepuru Sound.
Picton is a small town at the top eastern part of the South Island, tucked into the base of the Sounds and housing the port for interisland ferries, cruise ships, cargo ships and excursions out into Queen Charlotte Sound. It is in a beautiful location, but the town is what you might imagine based on its purpose – it is part industrial port town, part horrific cruise ship tourism and part normal houses for the 4000 people who live there.
Monday – Move day
Rainy morning, pack up, grocery in Nelson, misty drive to Picton with short stop in Pelorus Bridge, move in to new place (ugh – why why why does anyone think an Airbnb should be stuffed full of old personal junk?) where soon after Helen (the hostess) stopped by to tell us how clean everything is (ha!) and how to use the bug exterminator inside the house should we have any sandflies inside with us (no thanks, we’ll leave those outside!)
The day improved dramatically with a very pretty walk in cloudy weather on the Snout, which is a hilly piece of land jutting out between Picton Harbour and the neighboring Waikawa.
Tuesday
A stormy and rainy day. I went out for very short walk but was quickly chased back inside by bugs and rain. Hale took the chance to catch up with family via Facetime. We had a quiet day playing around learning to use a real espresso machine and pecking away at our laptops catching up on administrative tasks, planning, journaling, and investigating next adventure ideas, while the rain poured down outside.
Wednesday
Another rainy morning but I took a long walk along the road to Waikawa while Hale dealt with HSA bureaucracy with Fidelity. It’s nearly impossible to bank or get credit cards without a residential address due to the laws meant to address money laundering. It’s one of the biggest challenges of this nomadic life – the world is not set up for people with only a mailing address. (And unfortunately the computers are smart enough to know our “street address” for our PO box is not a real residence.)
As the weather improved, we made a short drive to Rarangi Beach north of Blenheim. It’s a nearly deserted rocky beach and not the best for walking – I managed a face plant into the rocks when I got tangled in a root.
We spent the afternoon in Blenheim with a stop at Lawson Dry Ridge winery, an aborted attempt to walk a flooded Lagoon Track, a picnic at an old church with an apricot tree, another winery stop where we enjoyed chatting with a hostess who was working her first job after graduating with a viticulture degree. We made our way to a fun walk in the Wither Hills with their golden colors despite the threatening rain clouds. Grocery shopping in the rain showers and then home.
Thursday
Finally it was a day worth trying to explore the sounds – the whole reason we came here! We drove out to the world famous Queen Charlotte Track (QCT), which can be walked end- to-end in four days but which we planned to sample in day hikes. It was a pretty drive, albeit still cloudy.
Our first stop at Mistletoe Bay turned out to be a real winner. The ecocamp itself is very nice with just donations requested for clean toilets and parking. We started with the short Peninsula Track walk followed by a gorgeous dark fern filled walk from the Bay up to QCT where we climbed the steep hill to Onahau Lookout. 360 views over all the arms of land and sea. It must be nearing holiday season – we had to share our first summit on the trip! (5 other people so not exactly Yellowstone)
A bit further drive and another beautiful cloudy walk on another portion of QCT with different terrain, waterfalls and views. On our way out, we picked up an Israeli couple hitchhiking back to their van. We were the first people from US they had met in their two weeks here.
Friday
It was meant to be a rainy morning, but turned out to be fine. I spent the morning checking off items on our project plan and redoing our itinerary for South Island to drop Invercargill and reduce time in Manapouri and settled on an extra week in Wanaka. Hale again dealt with HSA regulations, then he had a relaxing afternoon reading while I went out walking for a great long distance chat. (One with a long interruption though since the wind the previous night must have knocked out at least one cell tower.)
Then out to the Snout again – more sun this time, until I turned around and saw the clouds coming and got a text from Hale that he was getting hail at home, then a downpour. Diverted to return via street (again!) and made it home without rain or hail.
Saturday
We were both up early for a planned long day in Pelorus Sound. Very pretty drive out past Havelock and Pelorus Bridge to Elaine Bay, including a short stop while a farmer in swim trunks and gum boots moved his stock from one pasture to another using the road for their path.
We started with the beautiful Archers Track walk along edge of water with views everywhere then dropping down to Deep Cove and then Penzance Bay for a picnic on the wharf. We passed 2 people in 20km. Then we took the most amazing drive ever out to French Pass. Truly stunning. Crazy one lane dirt road along the steep hill, sometimes populated with sheep who would run off when we approached. Long and pretty drive home – arriving late.
Definitely my favorite day in this area!
Sunday
I was up early for laptop time where I booked a new spot in Wellington having decided being in the city is best and not wanting to risk another “homey” apartment after this week. I also started to read about Europe options since we’ll someday have to leave New Zealand.
We decided to do the Port Underwood drive in Frenzy’s book between Picton and Blenheim. It turned out to be a lot of slow winding hilly driving on unsealed roads between mainly small private coves = not worth it. (In all fairness, this might be the first time that book has steered us wrong.) Kakara Point and Robin Hood Bay were fun stops. We saw the start of the Kiwi holiday camping and beach season at White’s Bay then went on to previously visited Rarangi Beach for a picnic, a short walk over to Monkey Cove and an even shorter cave explore.
The best part of the day was a fun and scenic walk through the Wairau Lagoons out to a shipwreck – so funny to see it sitting in what appeared (until right up on the wreck) to be a solid field of grass.
Wrap
I’d long been looking forward to our time here, but it didn’t live up to my dreams and isn’t somewhere I would choose to base us again in the future. Part of it was that our Airbnb was a major disappointment and that the weather didn’t cooperate, but also the town itself was quite a long way from anything we wanted to do. That said, we had some great excursions from here and I’m glad we got to spend time in the Sounds. Next time though, I would just double our time in Nelson and make day trips over here.
Week 9 of our journey