Monday, January 19, 2015

Jan 11-15: Marlborough Sounds Trip

We have been at busy working a HelpX stay at Oxford, Canterbury- so for a nice break we decided to do a 4-day trip up to the Marlborough Sounds, at the top of the South island. Its about 4-5 hours to drive there from Oxford, so we broke up the trip and stopped at Napenape on the way. The Cathedral Cliffs were cool.
Summer is definitely here, and we lucked out with great weather on this trip, mostly 28-30 degrees and sunny.
There are some beauty campsites in the sounds, it was a long winding drive up into Kenepuru sound, but very nice scenic driving on a sunny day. We did a hike to a lookout high up on a hill overlooking both Kenepuru and Queen Charlotte sounds, got some nice pictures up there.

On the way back we stopped at Wairau Lagoon to see the shipwreck of the SS Waverly, a steamer built in 1883.

I tried some fishing in the sounds since they're famous for snapper, but nothing- tried again on the way back at Kaikoura, but got nothing but small sharks.