Today we left Nelson, for a few days as we'll be back soon enough, and drove to Mapua. It's a small, rather idyllic town set in the middle of nowhere which looks out over the Waimea Estuary to 'Rabbit Island' or Monturoa. It's a quiet little spot and we stopped to have lunch at the Jellyfish Cafe before catching the ferry over to the Island.
(we joked about swimming to the island as we didn't realise how incredibly close it actually was!)
Looking out from where we pulled up at Mapua
Rabbit Island
The Ferry - which has a hammock where the driver sleeps between trips
Cannelloni
Our View for lunch
a random bird statue at Mapua
The 5 minute ferry took up to Rabbit Island which has a beautiful beach
This little fellow stood next to us and just stared for ages!
and then they slowly began multiplying...
until there ended up being lots of them gathering around us!
One of my favourite pictures from Rabbit Island with a fallen pine tree (which cover the entire island bar the beach itself) framing the crystal clear waters, blue sky, and soft golden sand beach that's littered with sparkling shells
a random crab shell
A quick picture of me on the beach
We're definitely trying to squeeze in lots of relaxing and beaches on the trip!
After spending way longer than expected at Mapua and Rabbit Island, we planned for 2 hours we left after about 5, we went to drive to Montueka but Bernard wouldn't start again. I've not mentioned it much but Bernard needs a jump start every time we turn him on, and he often just stops when reversing... we're planning to take him to a mechanics soon but we'll have to wait until we're back in Nelson now. So after asking a random lady to help (so thankful for the legendary Kiwi helpfulness and friendliness) we finally got on our way to Montueka. We then had to drive to five different hostels as none had any room free! We'd assumed, since it's out of season, we wouldn't have too much difficulty getting a room, but the closer to december we're getting the busier all the hostels are becoming!
We eventually got a 3 bed room at the Happy Apple and we're all just relaxing in the lounge before making dinner, while trying to plan what we want to do in Able Tasman tomorrow.
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