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Back to Picton, then to Kaikoura

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Tuesday 3 March 2026 – All we had to do today was to get from the Abel Tasman Lodge down to our next accommodation, which was near Kaikoura. We had a choice – take the quick route to Blenheim and thence south towards Kaikoura, or add extra time and scenery by taking the Queen Charlotte Drive, a “scenic route” which led to Picton, where we had arrived on the South Island three days ago. Our itinerary’s description of the Queen Charlotte Drive as “one of the most scenic drives you’re likely to encounter” sealed the deal, despite that it made the already quite substantial journey an hour longer.

As we left Mārahau we saw a series of the trailers that the water taxi folk, Aquataxi, use to haul their boats around;

the water taxi custom in that part of the world obviously drives a substantial business. Our route took us on roads that had become almost familiar – back through Motueka, Nelson and Richmond before taking a sudden left on the Queen Charlotte drive. In Motueka, we spotted an office of the Kiwi Growers of New Zealand, which sported an interesting poster;

not just normal or golden kiwis, but red ones, too. John, of Kiwi Dundee, back at Coromandel, had told us about them, but this poster was the first time we’d seen any further evidence of them. We haven’t spotted them in any shops, that’s for sure.

The route through Nelson and Richmond led us back near Pic’s Peanut Butter World and past the Nelson Classic Car Museum; since we knew there was a good coffee shop there, we stopped to make sure their quality hadn’t lapsed. It was very busy; it’s clearly a popular breakfast spot.

The route passes Port Nelson and immediately after that Jane had spotted something she wanted to explore – the Boulder Bank Scenic Reserve.  As you drive along the highway, you can see a narrow bank of land out to sea; it’s a long thin spit.

I initially thought it was an artificial construct, but actually it’s a natural spit of boulders, formed of the debris of land slips from the Mackay Bluffs, swept southwards by sea currents over 10,000 years. The spit is 8 km long and it is open as a hiking path.

What they don’t tell you about in the guide books is that there’s a waste treatment plant just a few metres from the spit, with, beside it

a substantial effluent pond. The smell was pretty familiar to us as something that we get in our garden when something has gone wrong with our septic treatment plant. There was a suspicious flurry of greenish water visible

but the various water birds didn’t seem to mind at all

and the general miasma seemed to attract quite a lot of insects, as evidenced by the number of swifts (or swallows or martins, they didn’t stop to let us work this out) flitting about in the bushes nearby.

There’s a swamp beside the track that leads to the spit, called the Whakapuaka Raupo Swamp, which provides a nice foreground to the backdrop of the hills thereabouts.

Undeterred*, we carried on towards Havelock, past some excellent views as the road occasionally led up into the hills.

It was clear that this area has a very significant logging industry.

We stopped for more coffee at Havelock. Jane had spotted a coffee cart in what looked like an attractive area, and she was rigfht.

The coffee was good, served by a very, very cheerful chap, whose laugh was akin to an offensive weapon. Shortly after Havelock one reaches the decision point: straight on for the quick route, or turn left for the scenic one. So we turned left, heading on the 34km, very twisty road to Picton,

which would have taken us just under an hour, except we kept stopping to check out the scenery and take photos. As promised, it’s very scenic.

Havelock as seen from the Queen Charlotte Drive

Pleasant to look at, and typical of the general scenery to be seen from Queen Charlotte Drive

A flat part linking the two bodies of water on the drive (called Linkwater, unsurprisingly)

Prehistoric Tree Ferns

I had been expecting some kind of wilderness route, but actually there were habitations and side roads all the way along, and, every so often, a pretty bay.

Eventually, we got to the official Picton Scenic Overview lookout, where we could see Picton nestling in the hills.

I was a bit cross with what I thought was an eyesore in the foreground here, which included a big ugly commercial ship which I hid behind the ferns. It actually turned out to be a rather interesting site and sight as we turned the corner. It’s Waimahara Wharf, in Shakespeare Bay, and

it’s a vast logging operation, which was fascinating to watch, with some clearly specialised machinery at work shifting the logs around.

Picton itself has, as we knew, a major port facility as well – big enough to receive the InterIslander ferries – and the route gave us a good look over it.

In reaching Picton we’d come full circle – out to Abel Tasman and back; but now it was time to head south to our destination for the day. As we went, the countryside changed remarkably, from heavy logging which, we supposed, sustains Picton’s role as a major port facility, to wine country with surprisingly bare hillsides.

There were some pine plantations on the hills, but they didn’t seem to be managed in any way (e.g. having the lower branches trimmed off as they grew); and there didn’t appear to be any attempt at planting more pines on these bare hillsides. Some places were very bare indeed.

We passed a salt works

and some more striking scenery

before heading down to a coast road and some cloudy and rainy weather.

This grey and windy weather lasted us until we reached our destination – the rather splendid Hapuku Lodge, a slice of luxury where we would be spending a couple of nights. We were welcomed by Lisa, who showed us around the place whilst our luggage was unloaded from our car for us and then led us to our accommodation – a tree house.

We have a great view of the hills,

and, remarkably, the snow on top of them arrived just a day ago.

Now, I don’t like to brag (oh, yes you bloody well do! – Ed) but this is a very luxurious place we shall enjoy for two nights. The accommodation is sufficiently nicely done that I’m going to have my work cut out just trying to understand, for example, the Japanese toilet that will cosset our nether regions whilst we’re here.

By the time we got here it was almost time for dinner, and we had a splendid meal. The portions were not excessive, but after dinner we still needed to go for a walk. Obviously. By this time the weather had cleared (good omens for the morrow)

and we took a brisk walk down to the “beach”, where Jane took this great photo,

and we admired the evening view back over the mountains, which we could now see very clearly.

So ended the day. Tomorrow, if the weather is good we shall go for another walk. Obviously. And maybe there will be some star gazing….you never know….

 

 

 

 

 

 

*  or should that be under turd…?

The Full Nelson

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Monday 2 March 2026 – Most tourists travellers arriving on the South Island at Picton* and looking to explore it tend to choose between two common itinerary options: head south to Kaikoura and Christchurch, then down the east coast; or head west to Nelson, Abel Tasman and then down the west coast. We are doing neither of these; or possibly both, depending on how you look at these things. We certainly wanted to visit Kaikoura and Christchurch, but equally we didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to meet Eve and Bill again. That’s why we included Mārahau. Our day with Eve and Bill was lovely, but we had one more day before we had to move on, so Jane did her usual traveller incantations, seeking to magic up something interesting for us to do. As ever, she did an outstanding job and we ended up spending the day around the city of Nelson, about an hour’s drive away, doing a couple of things that would be considered standard for us, but also a couple that wouldn’t.

As a great example of a non-standard activity for seasoned travellers such as Jane and me (modestly polishes nails on Rohan fleece), this does not immediately come to mind.

“Yes!” I never thought we’d cry, “let’s visit a peanut butter factory!”

But we did. And it was splendid fun.

Pic’s Peanut Butter is named after the founder Bruce “Pic” Picot. You can read why he got into Peanut Butter here, but rest assured that he is a Peanut Butter nut. He reckons his product is the best in the world; in New Zealand, the company’s market share is 41%, so there’s credibility in what he says, though Manilife might have a word or two to say on the matter. Whatever, he has created a factory which is also a retail and education centre, which offers tours, so Jane snagged a couple of tickets for us and we set off with plenty of time to get there for an 1130 tour. (Courtesy of a hallucination on the part of our TomTom satnav, we arrived just in time and panting only slightly.)

The tour is hosted by a very lively lady called Tania,

who spent about 20 minutes explaining all things peanut butter. She started with talking about where in the world Pic’s does business, and then invited the guests on the tour to place a red star where they were from. It was quite the international audience.

She then explained about the peanuts (not a nut, but a legume, as any fule kno). They use only hi-oleic nuts, a special variety only grown in a few places round the world; theirs come from South America. Hi-oleic nuts contain a higher percentage of oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, than regular peanuts and have lower saturated and polyunsaturated fat levels; this means they are healthier, and no additional oils are added during the production. The nuts arrive naked, having been shelled and stripped when picked, and then go into a roaster

before heading to the grinder.  Crunchy peanut butter is ground once, smooth twice, and a little salt is added before the butter heads to the various bottling lines. They also make a consistency between the two, which they call “smoochy”.

We were lucky to see the lines in action, as at midday the factory floor emptied – lunch break, presumably. Tania gave us 15 or so minutes to wander the upper floor, where we could, for example, see the original roaster that Pic used when he started as a cottage industry – a stainless steel concrete mixer, with a gas burner underneath!

There are plenty of info boards about the company and the products (natch) but also some with some very left-field assertions.

  • Peanut butter is useful in removing obstinately sticky labels
  • Frying a blob of peanut butter removes fried fish smells from your kitchen
  • Pic’s peanut butter catches 20% more pests than any other brand, so it’s popular for trapping and removing invasive creatures

There’s also an opportunity for people to make their own peanut butter – on the Peanut Butter Bicycle! Your intrepid reporter had a go.

Then it was time for a tasting session

and the group got samples of normal and chocolate peanut butter to taste – and also a combination we’d never come across before and which intrigued Jane greatly: salt and pepper peanut butter.

Tania made sure our tour was fun and engaging, and we left with two free jars of the product. Since we were down to our last few dozen teabags of Twinings Finest Earl Grey (uh-oh!), we called in at a passing Woolworth’s to restock, and look what else we found!

A peanut butter factory is deffo a left-field activity, and Jane had found something else somewhat unusual and maybe unexpected in a New Zealand provincial city:

The Nelson Classic Car Museum. This was amazing – the museum has over 150 classic cars on display and wandering among them is a wonderful experience. If you like that sort of thing, of course. There are various halls and sections within halls:

Vintage and veteran cars by the entrance

The Jaguar display…

…including the Mark 10, a favourite of mine

Classic American cars…

In a classic American setting

English classics in an English setting

Classic sports cars

There are some unusual cars among them

A rear-engined Chevrolet

The DeLorean

Not just any old Reliant Regal

and one that had a special nostalgia for me: a Wolseley 6/110. Dad had one of them, back in the 1960s.

I’m also taken by bonnet ornaments:

Packard
Cadillac
Cadillac
Pontiac Chieftain
Swallow
Excalibur
Stearns Knight

Such fun!

Also: photographic nerdery alert! Here’s a great example of how phones can be better than dedicated cameras. Between two of the halls were some display cases with model cars – Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox, that sort of thing. Photographing the cases with a normal camera was basically impossible because of the reflections. However, I knew of a mobile phone trick, so I took a picture with my phone.

The Special Power that I knew about was that there’s a facility within the phone’s own Gallery app called “remove reflections”. The power of this is quite remarkable, achievable with a single edit.

(I have used photo processing software as well, but that is to present correct horizontals and verticals (thank you DxO for PhotoLab with Viewpoint), something my phone can’t match.)

After these two activities, it was time to do some more conventional things.  So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We didn’t have a huge amount of time, but there was a handy hike up a hill just outside Nelson, with the prospect of a decent view over the city, so we headed to the start. It has an unusual destination,

and is a short but steep hike up a decent path.

In the interests of providing data (and, at the same time, demonstrating how I suffer for you), I measured the slope at 15° at its steepest point. That’s one in six by one way of looking at it, or 1 in 4 if you’re a mathematician and understand trig. In practical terms, we ascended 127 metres vertical in one kilometre, in a place called the Botanical Reserve. On the way up we could see that the view was likely to be rather good

and indeed it was.

 

There’s a monument there

with a needle pointing at a plaque.

It’s not really the Centre of New Zealand – that actually lies about 50km south west, on a golf course – but it was used as the central point for surveys in the 1800s.

The final visit of the day was to the cathedral; we’re not religious but we do like churches.

It has an impressive frontage

and a calm interior

distinguished by some spectacular modern stained glass.

We noticed, on exiting the cathedral, a plaque whose longevity might be cut severely short in the coming days or weeks….

One thing that is (literally and figuratively) striking about the cathedral is its spire, which we didn’t get a good view of. Since I didn’t bring my drone, I borrowed footage from a screen that was on display inside.

Many thanks to Make The Grade for the image. Lovely video, guys.

So that was our day in Nelson – a very unusual and very good one it was, too. The only thing for it then was to head back to our accommodation and test out that salt and pepper peanut butter. It’s very peppery; in our view it needs a bit more salt. It goes very well with jam or with tomatoes, which is apparently Pic’s favourite.

Tomorrow we leave Abel Tasman and head over the hills and, well, not very far away; we’ll get back to Picton and then head south to Kaikoura, thus getting on to the usual eastern route southwards. We have some interesting accommodation booked in Kaikoura…

 

*  Jane has just read that severe winds have resulted in the cancellation of InterIslander ferries today and probably tomorrow as well. My heart goes out to those people affected by this, as the ferries are fully booked and it’s difficult to know what the travel options would be under these circumstances. Gosh, we were lucky.

*  And let’s hope our luck continues to hold. We’re due to fly back via Dubai in three weeks’ time….

From Wellington to Abel Tasman

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Saturday 28 February 2026 – The sun put his hat on and came out today, perhaps to celebrate our departure from Wellington. The view from our hotel room was very fine,

and so we drove up to the Mount Victoria Lookout, which is well-known for giving panoramic views of the city. We weren’t the only ones with this idea.

We bumbled our way through the crowds of people slowly making their way up the 73 steps to the viewpoint (because our knees had finally forgiven us after we inflicted the Tongariro Crossing on them), and there was indeed a good view, of both the city

and the area around the airport.

It’s a great panorama spot.

The observant among you will have noticed a bunch of mountain bikers in the photo of the car park, and there was clearly An Event going on because every so often one would take off and then just disappear down the steep hill that leads up Mount Victoria.

After admiring the view for a bit, we drove to the ferry port, as we had to catch the InterIslander to take us over to the South Island. I was anxious to get there in plenty of time, as we’d been told that it was booked up solidly for months ahead; missing it would thus have put a major crimp in the second half of the trip. We got to the ferry port about two hours early in the hope that there might be something like a terminal building with, who knows? maybe even a cafe.

Nope.

There was at least a toilet there, and a machine that would have served us coffee if it had not run out, and that was it.

Jane, patiently waiting to get back into the toilet to retrieve her phone

All we had to amuse us for about an hour and a quarter was the view of the ferry we would be catching.

Eventually the serried ranks of vehicles were released to go on to the boat. We were taken by the significant number of camper vans there.

The queue of them stretched right back to the car park. Of course we got our turn to go into the belly of the machine

and, having parked, headed immediately to the Premium Lounge, access to which was included with our ticket.

And so passed a comfortable three and a half hours; there was decent food available and alcoholic drinks if we wanted, and a decent view of the passing scenery. The windows weren’t spotless, so every so often Jane or I would pop out on the viewing deck to take photographs. The views were impressive, both leaving Wellington

and threading our way through the islands outside Picton, the ferry’s destination.

At about 7pm we were let off the boat and started on our three-hour journey to Mārahau. The South Island scenery was some what different from what we’d seen on the North Island; more dramatic

and with a lot more vineyards,

which were, like their North Island counterparts, on the flat rather than on a slope as would be normal in Europe. We drove on through the fading light

stopping only to get more fuel and some breakfast essentials for the next day; and at around 10.15pm we arrived at Abel Tasman Lodge, so called because it is just by the entrance to the eponymous National Park. This would be our home for the next couple of days. We made ourselves a mug of Twinings Finest Earl Grey and hit the sack, as we had People To See And Things To Do the following day.

Sunday March 1 2026 – The People To Meet were Bill and his wife Eve. Bill and I went to school together back in the ’60s and had stayed intermittently in contact over the years since – another example of something Facebook is actually good for. They live about an hour’s drive from where we were staying and so could come over and take us to a couple of places to look around.

Bill had offered me a choice for the first Thing To Do; either a short but steep bush walk or a coffee cruise. Having proved my point with the Tongariro Crossing, I wasn’t in the mood for steep anything, and, as it happened, the route to it was closed, so the decision was made for us.  Bill drove us to Kaiteriteri;  en route, as well as vineyards, we saw fields of hops, which Bill told us the area was noted for.

For our coffee cruise, I was sort of expecting to board a fairly substantial vessel via a jetty and sit in a comfortable lounge drinking coffee whilst lovely scenery drifted by.

That was sort of how it worked. Sort of. But this is New Zealand, remember.

Our vessel was not all that substantial, and the boarding method had a lot in common with our Kapiti Island experience – walk on the beach and climb aboard; having expected a jetty, I was wearing street shoes and so a little spurt of agility was needed to avoid getting them wet in the waves. Several other vessels were using this boarding technique, so it’s obviously A Thing in these here parts.

Kaiteriteri is around the headland from Mārahau, and the two (and other points) are linked by a water taxi service, which seems a popular way to get around.

The chap who ran the coffee cruise was quite knowledgeable about the various things to be seen, both by way of wildlife and onshore properties, and happy to chat to us punters

which showed up his relaxed attitude to navigation

as we drifted past the nice scenery.

After about half an hour we reached the cruise’s destination;

Split Apple Rock. It’s just offshore by a long sweeping beach

which is clearly popular with kayakers and canoeists.

I was quite taken with the double canoe shown above, which was paddled dragon boat-style.

At anchor near the rock, the skipper amused us by throwing bread upon the waters

and, indeed, up into the air.

We eventually pottered back to Kaiteriteri where we had an efficiently served and very tasty lunch at a cafe/bar/restaurant called the Waterfront.

We headed back towards Mārahau after lunch, but Bill and Eve took us on a small diversion intriguingly named the Riuwaka Resurgence. This is a Māori Sacred Place, as evidenced by the waharoa (carved entranceway) to the walking path,

which leads to a short and pleasant stroll (including some steps, mind) past scenes of riparian loveliness

to a water hole

which is the Resurgence in question: a deep, clear pool where the Riuwaka River emerges from the depths of the Tākaka Hill. I don’t know if it’s disrespectful, but it’s a popular spot for people to go for a plunge. There were four lads there who eventually psyched themselves up to take the plunge.

None of them was prepared to admit that it was fucking freezing in there, but one chap did say that it was quite fresh. Jane took a fabulous shot of one of them going in.

Obviously a talented chap who could walk on water….

Bill and Eve dropped us back at our accommodation and we said our goodbyes. It had been a lovely day; great to meet them again after many years, wonderful to find that we still got on so well after such a long time, and very enjoyable activities, too.

We are at the Abel Tasman lodge for one more day before we chase off further south. It’s a pleasant place

with comfortable chalets and well-organised facilities (such as a guest laundry; well, these things are important, you know). In the grassy area to the back of our chalet we were able to see some passing wildlife: swamp hens

with their enormous feet;

a juvenile blackbird;

and a covey of around 20 California quails,

doing their usual scavenging bit and completely ignoring a passing cat

who was content to ignore them right back.

 

There being no scheduled items on our itinerary for tomorrow, Jane has been busy working out engaging ways to pass the time, and I’ll tell all in tomorrow’s page.