Punakaki to Motueka

So I can’t help but notice my blogs of this trip are getting shorter ha ha. Guess the mass blogging is getting to me, doing this all after the trip has been a bit tedious but we really did have a lot of fun and do a lot of cool stuff. Anyway....

It was a pretty low key morning as we headed to Motueka with not much planned for the day. Motueka was going to be our home base for our Abel Tasmen National Park. The drive was again, just gorgeous. It was about 3 hours just through a windy road with hairpin turns with thick bush (rain forest) on all sides. We didn't see the coast for most the drive as we cut through the top corner of the island. When we arrived we went to the isite (travel guide centre) and they gave us some good tramp ideas. We had also not reserved anywhere to stay for the two days we would be there so we found a hostel, which isn't hard in the winter so we weren't to worried. We decided on a short tramp in Abel Tasmen to Harwood’s Hole. It is the 2^nd largest sink hole in the world at 300m deep. They don’t have the hole roped off so you could get right up above it. It was so deep you couldn’t see the bottom and being on the edge was pretty scary. But we were careful and I was really wishing we has some repelling gear...and that I could remember all the anchors and stuff for how to repel ha ha. But it was an easy tramp (as natural as that sounds to say here I can’t help but try and think of how it would sound 3 months ago...easy tramp ha ha sorry immature moment J, really though it means hike). But it was a nice relax day after the exhaustion of travelling really was starting to add up and we needed our energy for the next day. We did pass a few places that our guide book said was where LOTR was filmed but we couldn’t find the exact areas but you can really tell the scenery is similar. So we went back to our hostel and made some dinner and watched a movie. That night it was my turn to sleep in the car wish Josh, so it was bit uncomfortable, but not too bad and just barely long enough with the seat down.Wow record short post ha ha, although maybe it is better this way...all the details were getting muddled.

Howard's Hole

View of Motueka