28 degrees, sunny
We left Takaka promptly to make the fairly long drive to Murchison. Back over the Marble Mountain road with John under strict instructions NOT to look at the spectacular views as we headed towards Motueka – he managed it for the most part. But we did have a lovely view as we stopped for 12 minutes at the traffic lights on the one way section.
The drive followed the Motueka river for quite a long way which was very picturesque and we stopped for lunch at a picnic site about an hour before Murchison (or so we thought). Five minutes after starting off again we passed our campsite as we drove on to the Buller Gorge. This is the first time we’ve had to pay entrance into any scenic area in NZ, but $10 each got us over the longest swing bridge in New Zealand which was quite impressive.
There wasn’t much else on the other side of the river (that was free!), so we went off on a walk through native jungle type foliage and a scramble over some rocks to reach a waterfall on the Buller River. Once there we watched some white water rafters jump into the river from a rock about 5m high on the other side of the river and float downstream in the rapids from the waterfall and some of them got into the raft and went down that way – I know which one I’d do!
However, we decided to book our white water rafting experience here rather than at Queenstown as it was quite a bit cheaper and we’d been told the river was a lot quieter than at Queenstown too. So booked a trip for 9.30 am tomorrow.
Our campsite is lovely, quite the best one we’ve been on so far, $36 per night, spacious pitches, nice facilities, no trampoline and only three or four other occupants. And this is the busy season! Only trouble is there is no phone signal or WIFI so falling behind with the blog updates.
