The Final Leg

The final part of our holiday was spent sunning ourselves at Momorangi Bay on Queen Charlotte Sound.  

I must tell you about where we stayed in Nelson first - Tahuna Beach Holiday Park.  It was like being trapped in an episode of Hi-de-hi, complete with "Good morning campers" wake up call at 8.30am!  

Our tent was wet and we were tired so we decided to stay in a cabin which was a reasonable price of $85 per night.  We were able to set up our tent next to our cabin which happened to be on the end of a long row of motel unit type rooms (not exactly what I'd call a cabin).  The room had two sets up bunk beds and a single bed - no double bed for Mum and Dad.  One of the top bunks was missing a slat so Jesse almost fell through.  It was also right by the airport.  It felt like the planes were going to land in the parking lot between the two rows of cabins.  The planes started at 6.30am so we were all well awake by the time the wake up call came at 8.30!

It was just hilarious - as I said it was like being trapped in an episode of Hi-de-hi.

We were very pleased to move on to our lovely campsite at Momorangi which was fantastic.  We set up our tents and spent four days here - the longest we spent anywhere on our trip.  We were happy to relax and enjoy the sunshine (Jenna a little too much - she got terribly burnt).  There was no cellphone coverage so we could truly relax.

We spent time swimming, kayaking and just generally enjoying ourselves before returning on the Bluebridge ferry on Monday afternoon.  Now it's back to normal living - ah what a shame.  We had such a good time.

Things I'd change about our holiday:

• The weather - while it was pretty good most of the time, the two days we did get rain were ones when we wanted to do lots of sight seeing so that was a shame.
• I'd spent more time on the West Coast - we didn't because of the weather.
• I'd spent more time at each place - we decided this was a scouting mission to find out where we wanted to go back to and stay a while.
• I'd take a camper or caravan - the only reason for this is that we got really tired packing up and setting up.  We got really good at it - our best time was 45 minutes from start to finish.  We also found that, by the end of the trip, we were so good at packing everything into the car, we had more room and Andy could actually see out the back when he was driving.

All in all, we had a wonderful time.  People were very friendly and full of advice for where to go and what to see.  I highly recommend it.

I've added some extra images to the gallery below.