New Zealand, West, too fast
In today’s adventures: the apples story, the Motueka valley, and its police officers, we conclude with a big pile of pancakes.
So today we had another breakfast at the Wairepo House. The house is part of a plantation that has thousands of apple trees. Some of the apples we eat in Belgium are imported from this very estate. No wonder we had some (very good) apples in the room. The harvest will start in a couple of weeks, and on the whole estate, one can see the apples, almost ready to make it to the rest of the world.
We had a nice conversation with the host and other guests on the Rainbow Warrior and the involvement of the New Zealand Navy against the French tests that happened on Mururoa in the 80s. The ship is now a diving resort in New Zealand. Oh, and for the Belgian audience that still feels shocked that the French sunk the Greenpeace vessel: the french agent that was the chief of this operation, now works for FN Herstal (a Belgian weapon manufacturer) in their US offices.
And all these discussions made that we left an hour later than expected in the Wairepo House, on our way to Hokitika on the west coast. We headed for the Motueka Valley, beautiful scenery that would make our transfer over the mountains to the west coast as nice as possible. And it was, we looked our eyes out so much that I didn’t notice driving a little faster than allowed when entering the town of Tapawera. That’s 80 NZ$ we could have spent a better way…
In the afternoon, we arrived at the Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki. The sea has shaped the rocks here in a pile of pancakes. There should be some blowholes as well, but their sound only happens at high tide about four hours later, which we were not planning to wait for.
We then made it to the Awatuna Homestead Lodge, where Hemi and Pauline gave us an extremely warm welcome. They made us some light dinner that we enjoyed with a bottle of excellent wine. Another day lived like kings – life can be good!
Koen Blanquart is a strategy consultant, journalist, and author.
Wanderlust is one of his driving factors, and he shares his travels here on Boarding Today. Koen is also the skipper of SV Bagabonda, a sailing vessel making a slow circumvention of the globe..
Koen recently published a book on how to manage a remote team: The Suitcase Office.
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[…] and Pauline of the Awatuna Homestead had treated us so well yesterday: we ended the day on the Veranda with that bottle of wine. This morning, plans have been delayed slightly as we had […]
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