21.01.2014Road-Trip Along the West Coast

After visiting Fox and Franz Josef glaciers we continued driving north along the west coast and passed more stunning landscapes:

At the shores of Lake Mahinapua we set up our “kitchen” surrounded by the beautiful lakeside and its forests:

Despite some improvisations Andy prepared a mouth-watering Bolognese sauce:

Our pasta dish was accompanied by a bottle of chilled Pinot Noir:

And our campsite for the night wasn’t far:

Next morning we continued on along the coast:

We stopped in Westport to spend the night in a grand 150-year old villa which has been remodeled into a hostel. It had a beautiful garden and the guests were welcome to use the fresh garden herbs for cooking.

In the afternoon we headed for a walk along Cape Foulwind:

From the lighthouse viewpoint one has a great view over the Tasman Sea:

Grazing sheep are never far in NZ:

Some of the flowers along the way:

In the car park area we saw a weka bird. They are a bird species of the rail family which is endemic to New Zealand and which can not fly:

From the lighthouse we drove to the Tauranga Bay Seal Colony. But we arrived at the wrong season since there were no seals around at this time of the year. But the beach was still amazing and without any other people around we had it completely to ourselves:

Even the patterns in the sand catch your eye:

We waded in the shallow waters and cooled our feet and just enjoyed that beautiful afternoon:

In the evening we decided to make use of the hostels barbecue and prepared some lamb steaks, corn and spicy cheese bread:

We tried New Zealand’s “world famous” L&P lemonade:

And enjoyed a Pinot Noir from the Stoneleigh vineyard.

There was a billiard table in the hostel and Tini challenged Andy for some rounds. We won’t comment the scores, but it was a lot of fun 🙂

Unfortunately at this point we had almost reached the north tip of the south island and our trip along the west coast was almost at its end, but at least by now and thanks to this reminder-sticker we had gotten used to driving on the “wrong” side of the road 🙂