{"id":5520,"date":"2016-03-04T02:56:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T09:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/impressions\/?p=5520"},"modified":"2016-03-05T16:00:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-05T23:00:19","slug":"new-zealand-2016-marlborough-sounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/2016\/03\/04\/new-zealand-2016-marlborough-sounds\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand 2016 – Marlborough Sounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Nelson it is almost 100 km to Queen Charlotte drive, it starts in \uffc2\uffa0 but the whole drive is beautiful. So we stopped in \uffc2\uffa0Havelock , walked around, then drove past it to a hill where you can hike on the top a circle and see fantastic views:\"DSCN7479\"Low tide, a lonely boat on the sands or mud \ud83d\ude42 Lower-Havelock:\"DSCN7480\" \"DSCN7485\" \"DSCN7487\"In some half hour it was hard to recognize the same view from the hill – the tide was coming so fast:\"DSCN7492\" \"DSCN7496\" \"DSCN7498\"A quail:\"DSCN7507\"Marlborough Sounds is the top of the South island, all hills and mountains sticking from blue waters. Maori have a legend, as if their king Maui dragged the North island from waters as a fish , while sailing on his boat. And the front of the boat was very elaborately carved – this turned into Marlborough sounds. The coastline there is over 1700 km, there are so many waterways, therefore -water-taxis. etc. And the the few roads that there are- \uffc2\uffa0they are very curly. So we drove on the main part of Charlotte drive. then turned to Kendall drive and should have not driven more than 7 km. There we found a place like a beach where we could reach the water, some yoga ladies were having their retreat:\"DSCN7514\" \"DSCN7519\"In several minutes the island on which the ladies were lying and doing yoga was becoming smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared :-):\"DSCN7527\"Like a Maori king – I don’t know the man \ud83d\ude42 :\"DSCN7530\"Instead of turning back, we drove further some 20 km, looking for some beauty – but all the drive was dense trees and no views…no access \uffc2\uffa0to the beaches. When we found one side road to Misletoe beach – we drove there, nothing special, just the middle of nowhere. but the funny thing – here we see this British couple, all laughing and talking in a very pronounced Queens English – they thought that we cane to pick them up. A water-taxi dropped them there, and here they are with their luggage:
\n\"DSCN7537\"But then, of course. some person from their remote lodge came to pick them.\uffc2\uffa0\"DSCN7539\"The place we slept that night was a very interesting one. The lady of the Smith’s Farm Holiday Park was the first one to tell us so many advice and information, she also gave us 2 hot just baked muffins and a cottage with too many beds. All around they are having a living farm and there were pet sheep, a goat and a pig to be fed with the pills she gave us. The pig is getting too much, obviously:\"DSCN7545\" \"DSCN7547\" \"DSCN7553\" \"DSCN7557\" \"DSCN7562\" \"DSCN7568\"They even have a waterfall on their land, but I walked through the meadows and reached a very gloomy forest, walked for a while and then decided that I have seen too many waterfalls on this trip :-). Well, and it was getting dark. Andrei, thii time. refused to walk so far, because driving on that windy road for 50 km was somehow too much for him. For me- \uffc2\uffa0too. How can people want to live there and drive that road often \uffc2\uffa0-well, we are all \uffc2\uffa0different :-).<\/p>\n

The next day we still drove through winding roads of Marlborough to Picton, where ferry from the North island is coming:\"DSCN7579\" \"DSCN7582\" \"DSCN7585\" \"DSCN7599\" \"DSCN7601\"Now NZ has this flag. we read that there is a debate going on to to change the flag and have the fern leaf in it instead of British flag. As every healthy society they have differences of opinion \ud83d\ude42\"DSCN7607\"Picton seemed to be a very nice town, either. How nicely they incorporate the old Victorian building in a contemporary building:\"DSCN7614\" \"DSCN7619\"Kind of farewell to NZ:\"DSCN7616\"Earlier I wrote about deforestation. While we drove I talked with people and learned that on the East coast at some point the government decided to protect the exotic forests and forbid to cut trees there. But – there is a big But – they gave money to the communities to change their business and relearn from forestry to something else, like tourism. I like such government! \ud83d\ude42 whereas on the North part of South Island we saw a lot of hills just cut and lumber prepared to be boarded on ships \uffc2\uffa0-but we also saw lots of hillsides with pines planted in rows, bigger and smaller in different areas – they are growing timber in a planned manner, also good:\"DSCN7593\"<\/p>\n

There will be more pics and to be continued about Kaikoura and its seals -our last destination. After that we are heading to ChCh and home…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Nelson it is almost 100 km to Queen Charlotte drive, it starts in \uffc2\uffa0 but the whole drive is beautiful. So we stopped in \uffc2\uffa0Havelock , walked around, then drove past it to a hill where you can hike on the top a circle and see fantastic views:Low tide, a lonely boat on the … Continue reading New Zealand 2016 – Marlborough Sounds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-travel-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5520"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5566,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520\/revisions\/5566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/softblog.com\/impressions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}