Thursday, January 3, 2008

Culture Day

By today we were all pretty tired and decided to have a culture day. The Nelson Museum had an exhibition of Leonardo Da Vinci's machines that we went and checked out. Then we went out to the Waimea winery for a quick wine tasting and lunch at the cafe. On the way back we went to visit Hoglund Glass and the Craft Habitat.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Fireball Road / Abel Tasman NP

Dan was headed back to Christchurch today so we just had a quick spin up to Tantragee Saddle and down the Fireball Road tracks. They were not as sketchy as I thought they would be and was able to ride them all.


As usual it looks worse on the bike than in the picture

Helen decided she had had enough of riding so she went for a tramp in Abel Tasman NP, walking the first day of the coastal Abel Tasman Great Walk Watering Hole bay. This is a very easy walk with a great track and very gentle inclines and descents as it climbs over headlands and descends to beaches. The bush and the beaches are spectacular with great views across to a couple of the islands offshore. Unfortunately as it was a public holiday and the weather was hot and sunny, so it was incredibly busy with hundreds of people on the track and lots of motorboats, jet skis etc.. offshore - so there was a continuous hum of motors in the background the whole day. I tried to find a nice secluded beach to go for a swim to cool off - but all the beaches were packed with people and kayaks....

There were lots of kayaks out on the water - I think next time I would like to explore the area by kayak, a different perspective, but at a less busy time of year, when there is less chance of being run over by a motorboat.




Beautiful forest and beaches of Abel Tasman NP

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Dun Mountian Walkway

After a lazy morning - recovering from a late night celebrating the new year, we headed out to try and ride the actual Dun Mountain Walkway that we had failed to ride on Christmas Day.
We all rode up the Dun Mountain Walkway to Third House and continued on a little way until the track got less gentle, when Dan and I decided to carry on to see if we could make it to Windy Point. After a sweaty one and a half hour climb, the long descent back down the walkway was very quick and a lot of fun. Hopefully the ride also worked some of the alcohol from the night before out of our systems with all the sweat!