Christmas Vacation Begins

Maggie is at her best on the beach. She loves it. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we drove for two days. Most of the time in pouring rain. In fact, we were supposed to camp in Westport but it was so awful that we got a hotel instead. The road to Takaka Beach, where we stayed for the rest of the trip, was full of winding roads with no guard rails and one-way bridges.

 Here I am negotiating yet another one-way bridge. This one's a nice one. I did a lot of the driving on this trip because the roads were so curvy. Winding roads make Ben and I car-sick pretty quickly so Ben rode shotgun and I drove. Poor Erik had to sit in the back with the girls.

 I recognized this tall plant from our vacation in Germany when I was a teenager. Hops! Those poles are nearly as high as phone poles. I love hops! (But not so much in my beer. Erik can drink the hoppy ones.)

 The views were gorgeous once we got to the Northwest coast. And the sky started to clear as we neared Nelson. I have other photos but Erik and I started to comment about how all the photos start to look the same after a while. One gorgeous view is much like the next. Poor us!

 As soon as we got to the campground in Takaka Beach, the kids headed for the beach and Golden Bay (map). Our campground was on the other side of the dunes so we didn't even have to cross a road to get to the beach. (At home we have to cross one street to get to the beach.) Meanwhile Erik was left in peace to set up camp.

 Never leave home without the sand toys!

 The view East toward Abel Tasman National Park.

 Here is our camp site. It was spacious by NZ standards because we had to get a powered site. By September, when I booked, all the regular tent sites were taken. This site was nearly $70/night. So it was $700NZ just for the camp site on this vacation! Crazy! Cheesy little hotel rooms start at about $200/night - if you can find one! Things are fully booked starting the weekend after Christmas. We were lucky to find a room in Westport on the way up!

Tent set up and ready to relax.