Golden Bay

Loved the Golden Bay area for the couple days we spent there. Treated ourselves to a rare dinner at a restaurant, this one at local favorite The Mussel Inn.

It's apple harvest season in New Zealand, and it's so fun to see trees just sagging under the weight of so many beautiful red apples. Look out for them at a grocery store near you soon...but maybe buy ones that were grown more locally if possible!

Collingwood, the end-of-the-road town we stayed in, won my heart completely by having a fancy chocolatier, where I bought a delicious peppermint chocolate as a special treat.

And we both loved the walk to and around Wharariki Beach. This beach is actually on the West Coast, but because we're at the very top of the South Island, the land gets thin enough (eventually coming to a point at Farewell Spit) that it's a short trip from the golden east to the wild west coast.

This beach was gorgeous, with it's wild rock formations, caves of colorful conglomerate rock, seals (see the one in the pic below?)...

...tiny clams (?) in uncountable numbers clinging to the bottom inches of rock, where the tide rolls in...

...and other fun surprises, if you look at the rock carefully enough.

As we headed back south from Collingwood, we stopped at Te Waikoropupu Springs, the largest freshwater springs in all of Australasia; so strange to see the vast area of water just bubbling up from below.

We also made a diversion into the interior of Abel Tasman National Park, to the Caanan Downs area, for a walk to Harwood's Hole. The Hole is actually one of NZ's biggest caves, but it is so narrow and deep that it wasn't really possible to take a picture. Still impressive to glimpse in person, though. I'm also not going to post the picture I took of the view at Harwood Lookout, which was completely spectacular in reality but so relatively disappointing through the camera lens. But I can give you this shot of the forest that we walked through to both those sights, which might already look familiar to you fantasy film fans out there. Apparently parts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed in this reserve, and it's clear why. Especially when the sun briefly came out on our walk in, the light filtering down through the trees made it an utterly magical place.