Maruia Springs, Murchison and storm damage
From Christchurch we drove inland in pouring rain and increasing wind. We stopped at Hamner Springs a well known hot spring Spa town to find that other tourist and camper vans had the same idea. This small town was packed with tourists. So we drove on and found Maruia Hot Springs which had recently come under new management and had a relatively sheltered campsite attached. The hot water pools were beautiful surrounded by natural stones and because of the wind and rain the sandflies stayed away, normally the only fly in the ointment of this stunning place!
We met one of the owners with his three children in the pools and the 8 year old son told us proudly how he and his dad go hot spring hunting.
As the storm was brewing we soaked in comfort in the springs. The night however was very wet and our camper van shook in the storm. The next morning calm had returned as did the sandflies and their ghastly bites, so we soon made our way through the centre of the South Island via Murchison to Abel Tasman National Park.
Murchison (title picture) is a small town which had it’s heyday during the gold rush in 1840 and served as a frontier settlement supplying towns and mining villages with goods and beer. By the beginning of the 20th century it had 3 hotels and 3 large stables for horses. Unfortunately much of Murchison was destroyed in a very large earthquake ( 7.2 ) in 1929.
Now it functions as a stopover for tourists with antique and curiosity shops
Like so many places in NZ it offers extreme sports like canyoning and skydiving. All over NZ you get this mix of older tourists like us and young gap year students.
After a healthy typical NZ meat pie for lunch and buying some local smoked pork for dinner we continued our journey through the beautiful landscape
until we came to a road block on the major road we were meant to take to get to the coast. Thankfully a farmer who a had just driven from the opposite direction told us that we would probably get through the bits of road which had been affected by mudslides in the storm. Tony managed the partially swept away road with ease in our camper.
But it was a reminder of how nature affects the daily lives of New Zealander’s.
When we finally got to our campground in Kaiteriteri on the coast just below Abel Tasman National Park, the supermarket was closed because of the road closures and we could not swim as there had been a sewage overflow due to the storm. A natural pond had formed next to our campground and attracted a whole family of ducks
Tony and Friedericke travelling 