Bára & Kuba On the Road

Even if winter should have officially finished, the weather last weekend still reminded us once again that we would have to wait a little bit longer for warm sunny days. Because of that we had to again change our walking track plans for road trip.

After a while searching for some interesting places on websites we made a rough plan with the intention sleeping somewhere over night, packed all necessary things and left drizzling Wellington behind us.

Our first destination was a little sleepy Greytown. A tour guide pointed out renovated Victorian buildings on the main street, a colonial museum and a famous chocolate shop. Nothing super exciting, but let’s go there. Despite the name of the town, when we arrived there, we were welcome by sunshine. The first plus points. We started with a walk along the main street lined by those Victorian buildings. Some of them were quite nice, for instance a little book shop where we stopped and had a look inside.

After a lunch in the really good Cuckoo Café I persuaded Jakub to visit the recommended Cobblestones Early Settlers Museum. My idea was endangered when he realised that we needed to pay an entrance fee. I have to admit, it wasn’t the most interesting museum I have ever seen. However, the situation was salvaged by a man who told us about old printing techniques. Moreover, we could try to print our own text. We wrapped up our Greytown visit with chocolate sweets. Pretty yummy.

The second destination was Martinborough, the town famous for vineyards. Unfortunately, it was the end of winter and we also needed to drive our car so we just had a coffee in one of the local cafés. On the other hand, I had enough wine the week before so I wasn’t too sad :-).

Because the evening was getting closer, we set out to Tora beach, where we wanted to find a place to stay over night. The way to the beach ran through nice green hills which were intersected by a river, quite wild because of continuous rain. A few minutes after leaving Martinborough our cell phones lost signal and almost the only living creatures on the way were the sheep.

Finally we reached the beach. We managed to see the coast and also find a camping spot before it got dark. Now it was the right time to try out our sleeping car. We brought the blankets, pillows and sleeping bags so our mobile bed looked pretty comfortable. Just have dinner and we can go to sleep. The problem was, that I let Jakub look after our homemade tomato soup and ended with tomato soup all split on the ground. Therefore, we were falling asleep with the noise of sea and our growling stomachs.

In the morning we woke up early, however, not frozen as we had been a little bit afraid of. Our previous intention of seeing the sunrise was spoiled by cloudy sky, but as we took a ride along the coastline the sun shone through the clouds.

On the way back we decided to visit Cape Palliser, where a lighthouse is found and also colony of fur seals. On the way, running along the coastline, we had a spectacular view of cliffs and sea. We already saw the lighthouse near there, when we meet the river flowing over the road. As our car has its best days behind it, we decided not to risk ending up on the other side of the road where the river flowed into the sea.