Hospitality, Hospitality, Hospitality

Thursday, May 17th:

Our original plan was to leave Thursday for the Abel Tasman, hire a sail boat and spend the weekend touring Abel Tasman’s many beaches and lagoons. However, the small company which charters sail boats had closed down for the season, pulling each of their 4 boats off the water for maintenance and repairs. Distraught, we improvised.

Chris, Myself, Annika and Brianne decided we head west, then north, then come back down to Christchurch along the East coast in a big loop of the northern part of the South Island. We loaded into the car around 2 pm and drove the familiar road to Caste Hill. I wanted to take Brianne out climbing there since I had talked so much about it, plus Annika had never climbed there herself. Arriving at about 3pm gave us some two hours to explore all the problems Castle Hill has to offer. It was an unseasonably warm day and I was very thankful for it. We spent the remaining sunlight bouldering and taking pictures, really a spectacular afternoon.

From there we were headed to Greymouth. Chris and I had met a guy named Tony who owns a hotel there. When we first met him the first thing he asked was if we had been to Greymouth, we told him yes to which his response was a question, ‘Where did you stay?’ We told him the Global Travelers backpacker, which angered him as he explained that Greymouth was his town, and when we stayed in his town we would stay in his hotel. Ok, ‘Tony, we’re coming to your town.’

He was quick to oblige, offering us the ‘family sweet’—a large room with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms. Certainly a bit different from the backpacker we stayed at last time, or the beach we slept on and it sand flies the time before that. Brianne and I competed against Chris and Annika in a pizza making contest, which ended up being a bit trivial since we both liked our own the best. After pizza we sprawled out and gloried in the amount of room we had, the sandless state of the ground (I mean beds) we would be sleeping on and the water shooting functions of the shower we had. It was quite nice.

Friday, May 18th:

We awoke with ambitions to head North, Abel Tasman National park bound. But first, Chris called his friend's aunt who happens to live in Nelson (very near there) who was referred to Chris by that friend as ‘the coolest aunt in the world.’ We were surprised at just how accurate that statement became. She (Sue, the ‘coolest aunt in the world’) advised us to go to Abel the next day and come to Nelson and stay at their place for the night. Surely, she thought, we would tired of camping (little did she know we had stayed in the nicest hotel in Greymouth the night before) and in desperate need of a home cooked meal. We all smiled and motored toward Nelson.

We stopped briefly on the way along the coast in a couple of spots. The west coast of New Zealand is unlike any coastline I have ever seen. It is endless beach after beach after beach and beautiful bay after bay after bay. I think that any one bay along the West Coast from Greymouth north rivals any other I have ever seen in my life, and they continue on this way for hundreds of kilometers. It is an incredible drive.

However, we did not want to be too late to our surrogate aunt’s house so we made good time up the coast towards Nelson. When we arrived at Kip and Sues home we were blown away by their hospitality. I think that everything was offered to us except their cars, which I am sure they would have made us use if they had some to spare. They were incredibly hospitable and our ‘home cooked meal’ turned out to be some 20 chicken parmesans, a fresh salad, pasta, bread…the works. It was so great to sit around with a family over a home cooked meal and exchange stories for several hours. I miss that about home.