D49 -- Driving the west coast

Early to bed and early to rise… that seems to be the motto in small-town NZ. I guess the 10:00 a.m. check-out times at the hotels make sense in the light of the fact that restaurants close at 8 or 8:30. Visitors from places like Spain and Argentina must go crazy here!

Today we drove to Tauranga Bay Seal Colony. There were many more seals than in the colony we saw while kayaking, but you couldn’t get nearly as close and instead looked down from cliffs above the colony. It was still great, though, and I loved seeing all the pups playing and the adults lounging in their natural environment.

From Tauranga we drove down the west coast, which is supposed to rival coastal drives in California. It was very pretty, though I have no basis for comparison to CA.

We stopped in Paparoa National Park to visit some interesting rock formations, and got to see a large pod of Hector dolphins in the distance (that's Thomas in the pic).

After that, we stopped in a town called Hokitika, famous for its jade carvers. I did all the driving today, and it went pretty well except for the occasional “windshield wiper instead of turn signal” issue. When we got into Fox, where we’ll be staying for a few days, we bought a few groceries and I made salads and cup-of-soup. It’s the closest thing I’ve done to cooking in two months!

-Elva