Without much trouble we arrive in Nelson and as we get our bags from the bus we hear with a marked French accent “are you Lara?”, and yes, sure I was and the girl looking for us was from the Palace backpackers, coming to pick us up with a minivan from the 60s’. It was a nice surprise! Nelson is on the coast, with a nice little harbour, and surrounded by mountains. From downtown it is possible to start hikes of different lenghts, or go by bus to the Abel Tasman National Park for longer walks on the coastal trails there. That would have required some planning and booking ahead of time, in particular you need to arrange your walks according to the tides, because some parts of the path are accessible only during low tide. As the longest we manage to arrange is 1 or 2 days ahead, we are definitely putting the Tasman park in the “next time” list and stick to more “the sun is shining, let’s go up there now!” plans.

The day is indeed looking bright for our walk up to the “Center of New Zealand”, from where we should get a great view of the bay, once named “murderous bay”, after the Maori killed four of Abel Tasman’s crew when they first landed here. The first part of the walk is along the river, and then it starts climbing up, “just a little bit” as the guy at the tourist info said, which actually meant that my double layer of pants was roasting my legs and I had a river of sweat along my back…but yes, up there it was beautiful! This is the geographical center of New Zealand, marked with a weird looking compass monument. From the top one can follow paths onto a sort of plateau. The path wasn’t really marked as it should have been, but I think it was pretty clear that we shouldn’t have climbed the fence saying “private property. dogs found bothering sheep will be destroyed” (destroyed?? isn’t that a bit extreme?), even if some local mountain bikers did it just in front of our eyes. All nice and clear, there are 40 million sheep in New Zealand, 10 for every human, so you might think that if something with animals is going to happen it has to be with sheep…but NO. As we get more and more off the path in the beautiful countryside of Nelson, we get some nasty looks from…a group of goats!!! Yes, there they are, looking like they didn’t like us there, not even if we are keeping a casual mood. We walk, they look, we walk some more, they looked pissed, so we decide it’s time to leave, in particular when we just beside them spot a bull!

On the safer public property side we have time for a picnic in the sun and we head back to town for some steamed green-lipped mussles, a local specialty!

Next on the program is the little tourist village of Punakaiki, just down the west coast, even if most people just stop by for an hour or so to visit the so called Pancake rocks we are not in a hurry and decide to spend the night there.