The first weekend in June was another long weekend for us marking the Queen’s Birthday, whilst we debated staying home and celebrating Her Majesty’s birthday, we decided it would be more fun to explore some more of New Zealand. With winter well and truly on the way here and the mountains getting their first snow we decided to head as far north as we could whilst staying on the South Island and spent the weekend in Golden Bay.
The route to Golden Bay took us over the Southern Alps, crossing them for the first time via Lewis Pass. The drive through the mountains was stunning and we had beautiful views of the freshly snow capped peaks for much of our journey.
As we started our decent down from Lewis Pass we were surprised to pass through the Shenandoah Valley, and even more amused when a short time later we crossed the Rappahannock River! Eventually we arrived at the coast, and the scenery changes as we started driving through huge orchards of Kiwifruit, apples and pears. The region around Golden Bay is famous for the fruit and vegetables that are grown there and on the way home we stopped by a couple of roadside stands to stock up on fruit and vegetables.
As we got closer to where we were staying we decided to make a quick stop at an area called The Grove. We hadn’t seen much about this area, but we thought we would make a quick stop to stretch our legs after the drive through the mountains. There wasn’t much of a car park, but we stopped at the small pull off at the side of the road and found the trail leading into the forest.
The vegetation here was much more tropical than we have seen in Canterbury and as we walked deeper into the forest the we noticed that limestone carved into various shapes started to appear on either side of us. As we got further into the forest the limestone began to be covered by the roots of Rata trees, giving the area quite an eerie feel.
As we continued further along the trail the limestone on either side of us grew taller creating narrow corridors off of the main trail.
Eventually the trail also started down one of these narrow passageways, you can just about make me out in black at the bottom!
As we got to the end of this narrow section, the trail stopped abruptly at a small viewing platform on a natural rock ledge partway up a cliff! We had been so busy admiring the limestone rock formations that we weren’t aware that we had gained quite a bit of altitude. From the platform we had views out across Golden Bay.
We were not expecting such a great view from our short walk through the forest and spent a while watching the sunset before heading back to the car and driving on to the town of Pohara Beach. We rented a small cabin that was right on the beach and arrived just in time to finish watching the sun set over the Bay from the deck of our cabin.
We went for a quick walk on the beach before having an early dinner, as we had plans for a big hike in Abel Tasman National Park the next day.