Beautiful days and not so beautiful moments

We have been on the South Island since Sunday and we really love it! We spent the first night in a hostel in Picton, then we 'couchsurfed' in Nelson for 2 days and actually bought a car there on Tuesday evening, you can see a photo above :) After taking care of the paperwork for the car on Wednesday and stocking up on all kinds of camping equipment, including a slightly too small tent, we drove north towards Abel Tasman National Park on Thursday morning. Along the way, we were finally able to make as many stops as we wanted and visited Rabbit Island, a famous wreck, and Little Kaiteriteri Beach, a beautiful beach with yellow sand.

Unfortunately, the unpleasant part happened on the way to our first campsite: the roads here are partly very curvy and in some places super narrow. Sometimes you are only a few centimeters away from the rock wall next to you, if you don't want to drive into an oncoming car. So it's not that easy to estimate and maintain the correct distances. We ended up scraping against a slightly protruding rock below us, jumped a little in the air, at least that's how it felt. Fortunately, only the left front tire burst. We and the rest of the car are still in one piece. And luckily there were two nice guys behind us who even put on our spare tire. So, on Thursday morning, we had to go and change the tire at a nearby campsite. The only problem was that all the places here are pretty small and Takaka, where we were at the time, had a few workshops but of course didn't have the right tire in stock. So both front tires had to be replaced, which of course cost a lot of money. But we couldn't continue driving without tires, and we've already put the whole thing behind us. It can't always go super smoothly.

So, after having nice tires again, and especially a spare tire, we continued north to Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of the South Island. We walked along the beach for several kilometers and eventually found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, at least it felt that way because there were no people in sight and only occasionally a few birds. I don't think I've ever been to a place in my life that felt so abandoned, but it was still beautiful.

In the afternoon, we drove back south and set up our tent on a campsite near Motueka on the east coast, right on the beach. It would have been even more impressive if the sun had shown yesterday evening, but it was still great to camp right by the sea.

Today, we will slowly make our way to the west coast and make some stops along the way until we eventually reach Greymouth in a few days, where we will work in a hostel for accommodation for 2 weeks.