After Harwood’s Hole, we drove up to Collingwood in the Golden Bay area, stopped at the beach for a bit to admire the view, then walked over to Rosy Glow, a boutique chocolate shop and had some delicious homemade truffles. On our way back from Golden Bay we stopped in at Pupu Springs, the clearest freshwater springs in the world. I’d wanted to show them to Ann because they were in her Lonely Planet NZ dive book – unfortunately, you can’t dive there anymore because invasive alien algae Didymo has been found in the area and they don’t want it to spread to the springs, but they’re still impressive from above.Ann really wanted to go meet the Pujjis and see where I spent 2.5 months last spring (Aug. – Nov.), but I wasn’t up to it when we were in Nelson a few days ago because I didn’t really want to talk to anyone when my head was pounding from the sinus infection, so we backtracked a little bit to return to Nelson and visit. Jane was at choir practice but Arvind was there, so we got to visit with him and their guests and current WOOFer…and we just had to stay for dinner the third time he asked us, it would have been rude not to! They were having a delicious green eggplant and spinach curry, I’ll need to get that recipe to add to my collection from my stay there. We should get a chance to meet up with Jane and Arvind at WOMAD in New Plymouth this weekend, too.
We drove down along the coast to Marfells Beach 40km south of Blenheim and camped at a beachside DOC site. Even though it’s not a weekend it was pretty crowded there, and I don’t think our neighbors were too happy when we pitched our tent between them around 10:30 pm in one of the only empty sites left, but we did it in the dark out of consideration for them – we’ve had a lot of practice setting up camp.
Photo: Ann pretending to touch the water at Pupu Springs – it is forbidden!
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