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Continued north to Nelson and then stopped at Kaiteriteri beach for coffee. It was very popular as it was a public holiday to commemorate the treaty of Waitangi, made between the mauori people and the british government in 1840. The sea was a beautiful turquoise and golden sands. On to Pohara beach for the night in camp ground on the beach. Spent the afternoon sunbathing and reading, very relaxing and got a bit sunburnt!
Up early and onto 4WD tour of Farewell Spit, the most northerly point of the S island. Some mix up with the booking found us chasing him in our van for 2 hours and ended up on 4hr tour instead of 6hr! Chris, our guide, was NZ answer to Steve Irwin! Very knowledgable but slightly over enthusiastic! We saw the gannet colony and fur seals on the sand dunes and the white sand was so fine, we are still finding it in our beds! We climbed up a very high sand dune with great difficulty but enjoyed the fast slide down!
Then we nearly killed ourselves on several walks over high sand dunes and onto beaches, before finding a nice beach camp site for the night with wonderful sunset.
In the morning, drove over mountains with lots of our favourite hair pin bends again to Pu Pu springs (!) no you got it wrong! They are natural hot springs, coming out at 40,000 litres per minute.
Returned to Kaiteriteri and took the sea shuttle up the coast, calling at various places on the way, Saw the famous split apple rock ( see picture above) and seal colonies.
Decided to chance a COLD shower in the toilets on the beach to try and get rid of all the sand in our hair. It was very invigorating, once we managed to get in after lots of squeeling! and better once we were out!!
Next am, drove back to Nelson and walked up to the top of a very steep mountain to 'the centre of NZ' with wonderful 360 views of the city. Much easier on the way down!
We then stopped back for coffee stop at Havelock harbour again,as we liked it so much the first time! and then drove on to Picton for the night before catching the ferry to Wellington.
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