Our second day in Tākaka was wet, wet, wet. After dodging storms for the past month, it finally caught up to us. At the grocery store the night before, we’d heard folks talking about potential flooding in the area. Added to the flooding in the region the week before, we were concerned about how this latest storm might affect our travel plans. To make matters worse, the internet was not working in our house and our phones could not get data connections. The result was that we couldn’t get weather updates or check the status of the roads. We also couldn’t work or worry about the rest of the world. We took advantage of the imposed isolation. We played games and read.

But we were growing a little concerned about the weather conditions. It wouldn’t take much to wash out or block the mountain roads that connect Tākaka with the rest of the island. By mid afternoon, Julie and I headed into town to see if we could get internet access, only to discover that internet service for the entire area was down. Fortunately, less than an hour later, internet service was restored. Even better the weather was starting to improve a bit. By morning the rain had largely stopped, and we set off for our next destination: a week of relative down time in Nelson.

The drive was relatively easy. Along the way, we stopped by a farm stand and got a huge cabbage. We soon reached our next house, a small cottage near the Nelson city center. This our eleventh place to stay so far on our trip!

We were quickly taken by Nelson’s charms. The rain passed, and the next few days had nice weather. We enjoyed walking around the small city. Only a short distance from our house there was a tiny botanical garden dating to the 1880s — the Queen’s Garden — and on a couple of occasions, we strolled through. Lydie tried to make friends with an eel.

Nelson was so delightful that we started fantasizing about moving again. Christchurch has some competition. Julie and Lydie picked out some cute houses that were so small we almost could have taken them home with us.

We’ve been traveling hard. While our experiences have been unforgettably wonderful, we also needed to catch our breath. Some of us started our online scuba course, which we hope to put to good use later in our trip. Julie and I also worked to plan later portions of the trip, both in New Zealand and in Australia. I worked on my scholarship, preparing for a talk that I would be giving in Wellington the next week. Julie also had a bunch of work to catch up on, particularly since we were without internet access for a while in Tākaka. While tackling these challenges, I also perfected my stove-top coffee brewing skills.

For one dinner, the girls and I walked to the local fish market, where the Hoki was cheap, fresh, and tasty.

One of our days in Nelson we drove out to the Marlborough Sounds, where we hiked for 10 miles on the Queen Charlotte Track, another of New Zealand’s Great Walks.

The Marlborough Sounds is yet another place of special natural beauty in New Zealand. The sounds are a continuation of the spine of mountains running diagonally through the long axis of the South Island. As the mountains reach the sea, they simply continue into the water, and the sea-drowned valleys create an extensive fractal amalgamation of coves, islands, and peninsulas.

The hike was typical New Zealand, passing through fern-filled forests. This place has more than 200 species of ferns, with 40% of them being found only in New Zealand.

We continued to marvel at the scale of the huge tree ferns.

The trail soon began to climb, offering us nice views of the sounds.

Along the trail we saw signs of the recent storms, including a dead possum. Then again, this fellow might also have been poisoned. Possums are an invasive species in New Zealand. In fact, the only non-marine mammals that are native to New Zealand are bats. Newcomers like possums unfortunately prey on endangered local birds, including kiwis, and there’s an extensive effort to get rid of them. We’ve seen lots of poison traps on our hikes throughout the South Island.

Or maybe this guy was just *really* good at playing dead. On our way home from the hike, we stopped at an inn known for its mussels. The sounds are home to a special kind of mussel — green-lipped mussels — and we wanted to try them. We had a super meal, which inspired us a few days later to buy our own mussels and cook them at home. It certainly isn’t hard to figure out why they are called green-lipped.

Julie spearheaded the preparation, while I added value by pouring the wine.

Lydie and Cassie also helped out. Naturally, we cooked with white wine from the nearby Marlborough wine region.

We were all thrilled with the results. For me, it was the best dinner of the trip so far, mostly for the experience of cooking local mussels together in our little kitchen in Nelson.

Our week off passed quickly. It was both productive and relaxing. Unfortunately, as our time in Nelson started to wind down, the rain returned—with a vengeance. This was not good timing, as the next day we would be driving to Picton (about 2 hours away) to catch an 11 am ferry to the North Island. The Cook Straight, which is between the islands, is notoriously rough at times. The ferry company emailed us to watch the weather carefully.

Conditions quickly worsened in the region. The road between Nelson and Tākaka — the one we’d been worried about at the start of the week — closed. Two other major roads in the area were also closed due to flooding. This left only one major road out of Nelson, which fortunately was the route to the Picton ferry. We weren’t sure if the road would stay open, as it already had flood warnings. I took a quick screenshot of warnings from the national road service and highlighted the road we would need to take.

Even if the roads were open, we weren’t sure if the ferry would be running. Hoping for the best, we packed up. To get to the ferry on time, we decided to leave by 6:45 AM. We went to bed early with our fingers crossed. We had enjoyed our time in Nelson. Maybe Nelson wasn’t quite done with us.

-Will