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Looking up Lake Rotoiti from car park

Start of Speargrass Hut Walk

View of Lake Rotoiti from bushline hut

Speargrass Hut from trees

We took a day off last week. What should we do? There is so much to choose from in this region, as long as relaxing or outdoor activities are your thing, kayak, walk, swim, cycle, sail, fishing, vine yards, mountain bike, ski (water and snow), scenery or just laze about and do nothing. Tramping(hiking) won. Oh s??t where do we go. Of the many walks we decided the hour drive to Nelson Lake’s would be good with a night stay at Speargrass Hut and a Geocach (more details on this later) thrown in.

The drive there is always fantastic. At first past the many vine yards then once you get into the Wairau  Valley the beautiful scenery takes over. In the foreground to the north the braided river then gives way to the manuka then as the hill steepens it changes to beech trees and finally the bare rock for the final 300 plus meters which in the winter are covered with snow. To the south the rolling hills give way to trees and finally the tall mountains. For 40 plus kilometers it is a straight road so very easy driving. A few more curves for the last 10-20 kilometers. Past the turn off to the ski field at Rainbow Valley.

Saint Arnauds soon comes into view with the majestic Mt Roberts and if you look carefully you can see the track winding up the hill and bush line hut just protruding from the trees. This hut is one of my favorite huts to stay in this area. Only a 3 hour return trip to Mt Roberts’s car park. Sitting on the top of the hill with a coffee in your hand at sunrise or sunset. It doesn’t get much better than that.. Overlooking Lake Rotiti and the small town of Saint Arnauds is very hard to beat. Above the world and the only worry of what time shall I turn in? And a little too much information, the view from the loo is the best in the world.

Wow I am getting ahead of myself and we are not even staying there tonight.

Driving 2-3 kilometers past Saint Arnouds to the turn off to Mt Roberts’s car park. Oh the first part has now been tar sealed. Past the jetty that looks down the lake to Cold Water Hut, over the rickety one lane bridge that announces the start of the mighty Buller River. The road turns to gravel here and winds a few kilometers up to Mt Roberts’s car park through firstly manuka and finally well established beech.

Left the car with the best view in the world,overlooking the lake and the surrounding countryside.

Packs on and let the walking commence.

At first the track goes gently down for 30 – 40 minutes. You need to take care in places as the going can be a little troublesome as you find places to place your feet among the many wet and slippery beech tree roots.

The forest was alive with the high pitched whistle of the many rifleman. This is the smallest bird in New Zealand. If you stood still 5-6 would be within a few centimeters of you moving about the forest floor or up the side of a tree like a shadow. Then the silence is broken by the harsh call of the kaka. This is one of New Zealand’s mountain parrots. Move your feet and scratch the undergrowth and the robin will soon appear to investigate what you have unearthed. If you are lucky and stay still enough he will land on your boot.

The moss on the ground and on the tree trunks is a vivid green oh for a carpet in the house of that color and design.

A short stop for lunch beside the river then steadily uphill with the river on your right until you come to a clearing covered with tussock. At the far end was the hut. The tussock moved and changed color in the gentle breeze.

Boots off, billy on for a hot cup of tea.

We sat outside in the evening sun looking at the beech trees give way to the high mountains thinking we would be the only one in the hut.

By evening there were 10 of us in the hut, over your evening meal sharing story’s of your trips and tramps.

Early in the morning we checked the cach that was 30 meters from the hut.

Caching (www.geocaching.com) is a free activity which takes you to different places in towns or countryside you may not get to. At the end is a box where you sign your name and on line show you have been to this spot. In the box can be trackables which are objects that wish to travel to different parts of the world. Check it out on line.

Finally and reluctantly the walk out to return to work

Before I start regaling you on my next story you need to know a little about where we live. We live on the side of a very steep hill overlooking the spectacular Marlborough Sounds. This is an area where four large water masses come together. The Keneperu Sounds , Queen Charlotte Sounds and Port Underwood and the Cook Strait.  All in all a very stunning area with the fantastic contrast of the  clear  deep blue sea and very steep hills rising straight out of the sea. The forested hills are mainly outstandingly beautiful native beech, 5 finger, tree ferns and manuka.  All of the Sounds are sprinkled with many Islands of various sizes and shapes. Many of the islands are pest free and are used to breed our endanger species.

Now back to the story. We were sitting with our guests over breakfast talking about the wild life of New Zealand.  It only had one mammal before the advent of man and that was and is a bat. When man first arrived there were many birds. Most of these were flightless. The biggest were an eagle (big enough to fly off with a women) and a moa( it looked like a very large ostrich about 3-4m high).

Then as always we get into what they should see and do on their days in the Sounds. It always includes viewing the sounds from one of its many high points, one of which is a short 10 minute drive to the saddle up the tar sealed road behind the house. From the saddle you can see to the East: Bays in Port Underwood and on a good day the North Island. To the North: the Tory channel where the ferry comes in and Kapiti a small Island a few km from the North Island Coast. To the South: Kaikoura and their snow capped mountains. As the light is best and the best photos can be taken in the morning our guests were going to visit the view point first.

20-30 minutes after leaving us there was a skid on the drive and our guests had returned a little agitated, fear in their eyes and very excited. After few moments they had calmed down and said they had got out of the car to look at the view and a moa had come out of the bush and chased them back to the car. As they backed away the moa chased them pecking at the windows of the car.

My wife and I were totally incredulous about this but not wanting to make our guests feel fools we got back in the car to check it out. And what do you think we found at the viewing point 3 very large ostriches.  It turned out that after a recent storm on the Port Underwood side of the hill these farm raised animals had escaped, had not eaten for a few days and associated humans with food and just wanted to be fed.

In and on their food

We have managed to help Mum and Dad WEKA bring up 4 babies this year (see the attached photo taken at our back door). A weka is a flightless New Zealand bird about the size of a large chicken with very sturdy legs about the thickness of an adult males thumb. The adult weka can be a mischievous at times. They attack and kill our chickens in the breading season. They also have a tendency to run off with any object that is not tied down. We have lost a pair of purple crocks, gumboots, coats, tins and the eggs our chickens have laid. These weka’s have real attitude. The other day my wife had recently planted 6 new roses and so I set the live opossums trap to try and save them from the many opossums we have around our piece of paradise that love the new shoots on her roses. It was a very wet and windy night and low and behold we caught dad weka. He had been out in the rain and looked a bedraggle mess. I opened the cage and let him out. He looked at us both and went over to my wife’s newly planted roses and proceeded to pull them out one at a time. When completed he looked at us again as if to say ,there we are now even and stomped off into taken their own photos of them and telling their friends these are kiwi they saw while in New Zealand. I have given up telling them that they are not kiwi (I will tell why in a future blog)

This is my first blog comment. We run a bed and breakfast (www.aseaview.co.nz) in Picton New Zealand. My wife and I are making an attempt to step into the 21st century. She will try and teach us both to tweet and my job was to learn how and teach us both how to set up a blog site from scratch. With much help from the internet I nearly have my blog site up and running.
We plan to blog about interesting happenings at our B and B as well as some of our interesting encounters on our holidays.