December 23, 2023
With our trusty Subaru packed with far too many bags …
[Wendy: “You have to be prepared!”; Nick: “Less is better”…of course, Nick comes from the travel perspective of carrying everything in a backpack up mountains. I come from the perspective of having a large car with plenty of space and never knowing when we MIGHT need this or that…The answer, of course, is something in between…]
…we have finally weaned ourselves from always eating “out,” to picnics or easy, minimal kitchen meals. For lunches we have settled on alternating between three choices: stick and slides, PBJs, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The difference between the three takes a delicate palate to discern…but it is all in who is holding the knife in to prepare them.
Nick is put to work at Pic’s Peanut Butter factory. By pedaling the bike, he is grinding the peanuts. He needs to speed up his production.
Given our predilection for peanut butter, we could not help but visit the factory where the best peanut butter in New Zealand is made: Pic’s. Even before we went to the factory, we had finished most of our first jar of the peanut butter…and, much to my dismay, it was truly better than any I’ve tried in the U.S. It is embarrassing. Just two ingredients, peanuts and sea salt ground to my perfect crunchiness. Aside from the highly entertaining tour, Nick and I realized almost simultaneously, that “Pic,” the guy–who decided, at age 55, that he needed to make a perfect peanut butter–is exactly our age. His life history is nearly a metaphor for our generation…trying many things, sailing, inventing, living in communes, starting a new business in his 50s…a character.
Having refreshed our peanut butter supply, we left the Nelson/Tasman area to head towards Westport on the “wild” west coast of the South Island. The scenery is almost boringly stunning. Verdant green valleys that are flat until a nearly vertical mountains pop up, covered in an intriguing mix of tree ferns, nihau palm trees, and conifers. Once again, everything seems slightly familiar, slightly California, but not. It is not as tamed as our California landscape.
The Buller River gorge while the water was an un-New Zealandy brown.
The drive to Westport took us through the Buller River gorge. The day of rain from the day before had turned the Buller River into a raging, brown river, pushing itself between the mountains. I was surprised to note the color of the water as I had grown accustomed to crystal clear waters flowing to blues and turquoise. A few days later we returned through the same gorge and the water had calmed and the browns given way to the more “normal” clear and blues
Quite often there are signs warning of a “one-way” portion of the road. Often it is a bridge that was built 100 years ago before having two vehicles actually passing was an issue. This one-way section, called Hawks Crag, is quite dramatic.
Both Nick and I couldn’t help but consider California’s little town of Westport above Fort Bragg. Would this NZ version be similar as they are both on rugged, remote coasts? The answer was as expected. Yes and no. Westport, CA has maybe two dozen buildings along Highway One before Highway One disappears inland towards Leggett and deposits onto Highway 101. Westport NZ has a main street that is only slightly larger than Gualala, but is definitely the product of the various natural resources in the area: mining, logging, fishing.
The abandoned Denniston mine not far from Westport. Excellently done boards with photos and quotes gave a good feel for the town as it was.
From our centrally located Airbnb, we headed up to the Denniston Coal Mine which sits on the mountain above the town. In the early 1900s, it was a town of its own with a mining school, elementary school, churches, etc. The coal was mined, then transported via a gravity fed cable system, sorted by grade, then sent down the mountain by horse-drawn wagon loads. The now abandoned site had a self-guided tour with lots of old photos and engaging stories from the men and women who made a living at the mine.
Pancake rocks. Just needs a little syrup!
When taking this picture of what was referred to as the “cauldron,” at my back is the blowhole. Unfortunately, the blowhole was perfectly timed to go off when my camera was in my pocket. However, the water below this natural bridge is mesmerizing as the water booms in and out.
Pancakes were next on our mind. Down the coast were the pancake rocks and blowholes. Another of Mother nature’s gift to NZ. The eons of sediment created a pancake effect in the rock formations and at the same time, the pounding ocean created a couple of blowholes. As with the blowhole outside the kitchen windows at Three Arch Bay in Laguna, patience for the perfect wave hitting the rocks at the right angle was rewarded with a sky-high plume of saltwater.
Trying to make sure we covered every inch of the South Island, we headed to Karamea where the coast highway ends in the northwest corner at Kahurangi National Park which is the west side from Abel Tasman track. Where the road ends, one of the Great Walks of NZ starts, the Heaphy Track. Nick and I found a picnic table and took out our requisite Stick & Slides (Nick made them this time) and we were promptly joined by hikers finishing the track after four days of hiking. For the first time in my life, I could actually talk their talk and hold my head up with the others, having just finished our Abel Tasman track. Swapping trail stories and hearing about new places for us to explore kept the conversation lively.
A little food porn…The meat is sizzling on a very hot rock so you can cut off bits of meat as it cooks to your liking. The cut was a rump roast, not a high end cut, but very flavorful and when cut in thin slices and cooked for seconds on the hot rock, it was quite delicious. Wondering if I could do something similar with a pizza stone…
With all of this traveling, we decided to pamper ourselves and “take a vacation” from our vacation. As our Christmas treat, we booked a night at the Maruia Hot Springs resort, located in the mountains east of Westport (hence our second look at the now clear Buller River). The hot springs had several incarnations before the current one. We found a pleasant room in a mountain setting with a deck that allowed us to take in the resort…at least until the sandflies understood that there was new bait.
An attempt at catching the elusive old farts climbing into the rock enclosed hot springs late at night.
The hot springs fed three natural hot pools lined with rocks and with increasingly hot water. In addition there was a plunge pool that hovered around 40° F. There were two outdoor shower heads next to each other: one with very hot spring water and the other with a fine mist of very cold water. I tended to stand in middle and turn, just to get enough from each to soothe the other. Although there was a large squirt container (like the now ubiquitous hand sanitizer stations) of sandfly repellent, it wasn’t enough to keep the sandflies away and we eventually chose to leave first thing in the morning.
Another…Where’s Nick? He’s there. This is Maruia Falls, downstream about 40 kilometers from the Maruia Hot Springs resort where we stayed.
About an hour from the Maruia Hot Springs is the town of Reefton, once a gold mining boom town, now home to a newly developed Gin and Whiskey Distillery. Several acquaintances had suggested a tour, so we booked a room (so we wouldn’t be drinking and driving) and went to explore the town. It looks very much like all of the California Gold Rush towns and was happening just a few years later than California’s.
I was arrested in Reefton for non-disorderly conduct. Nick, on the other hand, got to hug a giant sequoia. No one knows how it got there, but it is thought to be only 120 years old. It is short (by redwood standards) but has a huge girth.
I had booked the distillery tour online but got a personal phone call offering us an “upgraded” tour of the whole facility. We took advantage and showed up at the distillery to be greeted by a young man who looked, acted and sounded eerily like a dark-haired Scottish version of Cory. For this mom, who misses her boy, it was hard not giving him hugs. Found out a great deal about gin and whiskey making. And, of course, we had to buy some….just to be nice
Cory’s dark-haired Scottish “cousin” who gave the tour at the Gin Distillery. He’s 23 (Cory is 31) and 6’4″ (Cory is 6’3″) but has Cory’s mannerisms, sense of humor and sweetness. Weird. The photo on the right of Cory was taken in August 2023 and he has resculpted his body since then.
In anticipation of the Christmas weekend, I booked us a house in Greymouth where we hoped to hunker down for a few days, catch up on emails, laundry, and maybe do a little cooking to ease the meal budget. We have a three bedroom house that has a washing machine…that doesn’t work. Nick, my laundry guy, thought about seeking out a laundromat. This is Christmas Eve…and it is pouring down rain. Instead, Nick is hand-washing the clothes, hanging them to dry in the solarium, despite the lack of “solar”…and we are kicking back.
So many beers…so little time. Monteith’s Brewery in Greymouth.
On our way to our Greymouth house, we stopped at the supermarket and braved the crowds buying their last supplies for Christmas meals. For me, it was actually quite fun. Nick and I had decided to have what Google says is a traditional NZ Christmas Eve and Day dinners: ham or lamb, potatoes, and a veggie. For dessert: pavlova.
Given that I didn’t really know what the kitchen would be like, I took a minimalist approach to the meals, with the only actual preparation being the scalloped potatoes which would go for both meals. On an earlier trip, in a different town, I had seen pavlova (looks like an angel food cake, only flatter, and apparently more marshmallowy inside) for sale. I knew I could easily add some fruit and make a simple crème anglaise or whipped cream sauce. Nick set out in the market to find the pavlova while I finished choosing veggies. He came back empty-handed. Panic set in. We asked one of the clerks who offered to walk us over to the display…but it was empty. This created quite a stir in the store. Apparently, there had been a run on pavlova.
The clerk asked his boss, and she lamented that there were none coming before Christmas, but suggested two other stores to check in town. Christmas was saved as the Countdown (Safeway equivalent) had plenty.
As Nick finishes the laundry, I know my next task is to start booking lodging for the next few weeks. Neither Nick nor I understood that this is SUMMER and it is Christmas. Kids are out of school, families are on vacation, and the weather (other than today in Greymouth) is lovely. We are having trouble finding places to stay, so we decided to make some decisions about where we want to go…We had loved the idea of just wandering for several weeks, but we are old and want a comfortable place to sleep.
We are ready for Christmas. We hope all of you are!
Love,
~Wendy and Nick
2 responses to “NZ Days 39 to 45 of 100: Peanut butter, coal mining, and pancakes”
I have shrunk down considerably since then mom.
Indeed! A mere wisp of the boy you once were!