Nelson Lakes

A green meat sandwich!

We woke to the little tinkle of light rain which had been promised on a bigger scale as a start towards helping to end the long lasting drought from which the whole country is suffering at the moment. All the paddocks are parched dry with the sheep and cows eating dry stalks, apart from in the rare irrigated paddock.
With low cloud, misted mountains and continuing fairly gentle rain we headed off SH6 down the 11km road to Lake Rotoroa, the long lake, which has just a few houses/baches and a DOC camp a short walk from the edge of the lake. We did a 30 minute Nature Walk in our wet weather gear and enjoyed the singsong of the bellbirds before heading back down the road and onto Lake Rotoiti, the smaller of the 2 lakes but with more expansive views from the carpark on the lake edge.

Misty tranquility at Rotoroa

Rotoiti from Kerr Bay

After a tuna salad lunch we did the nice 90 minute Peninsula walk in the bush with the bellbirds along the edge of the lake from Kerr Bay to West Bay and then back via the little roads. Rotoiti is a bigger settlement than Rotoroa with a store, garage, school and quite a few houses, being a popular place for boaties and fishermen. They have a large, informative Info Centre which we visited just briefly before driving through the Wairau Valley.

These ones looked well fed!

From viewing the map we expected to be travelling along the edge of the Wairau River but apart from seeing it early on there were just dry paddocks where we expected the river to be. Just before we arrived at the small Wairau Valley settlement we found we were in vineyard country - it is nice to see the green vines. We are staying the night at a farm POP down a long driveway at the back of the owners orchard and are the only ones here. It's now dark and I think the light rain has just stopped - for the farmers' sake I hope there is more to come.