Murchison by Miriam

Miriam here –

We left Golden Bay today after a home-made breakfast of muesli for Harvey, yoghurt for Miriam and toast with feta cheese and lox for both. Harvey stopped at Takaka to update the blog while Miriam explored the local organic food store and extracted money from the ATM.

Golden Bay attracts artists and hippie-like individuals with a keen interest in the environment. The young man in the organic food store bore a strong resemblance in clothing if nothing else to people we encountered at food co-ops during our college years in Eugene. I overheard a customer ask the young man about a bottle of teriyaki sauce. She had never heard of it and he wasn’t sure what was in it. So I piped up with an explanation. The woman put the bottle down quickly.

We backtracked to Motueka, got gas and planned to eat lunch but couldn’t find parking. We were looking for the i-center to find out the best way out, got lost, got gas and accidentally found the route. So we left without eating and headed for the West coast through Westport and the Buller gorge.

We stopped for lunch in Murchison, a small town surrounded by very pretty hills at the head of the gorge. It is not yet a major tourist attraction but is beginning to get some attention.

It was about 2:20 pm. Harvey ordered a whitebait sandwich (whitebait are tiny little eel-shaped fish about an inch and a half long and an eighth of an inch wide; the fish are mixed with egg, cooked like a pancake and served on a piece for frenchish bread with a lettuce leaf. I ordered the fish and chips, and we both had flat whites. We were lucky. Ten minutes after we arrived the restaurant closed.

After lunch we wandered into the rafting and kayaking shop next door. They offer trips down the Buller river. We were curious because our son Ian used to be a river raft guide and both our sons are white water kayakers.

A young lady with dreadlocks talked to us a bit and suggested we take a trip with them down the river. We had planned to go on to the West coast that day, but we had no schedule to keep and it seemed like it would be fun to raft or kayak a NZ river, so we decided to stay in this beautiful valley for the night. The kayaking was in inflatables and in a calmer part of the river; the rafting was in Buller Gorge and seemed much more appealing. However, the operators would only run the rafting trip if three or more signed up, so we weren’t sure we would get to do the rafting trip.

We left the rafting shop and went to the i-center. With the help of a lady working in the center I preliminarily picked us a B&B to stay at that said it had nice views.

We drove over to check it out. The B&B turned out to be a beautiful lodge with a huge veranda, made almost entirely from two large trees: a Douglas fir and a macrocarpa. The main beams were Douglas fir and gigantic. The floors, paneling and much of the furniture were made from the macrocarpa. The lodge was set on acreage with some cattle, and a view of the river and the mountains surrounding the valley. It is run by a British couple, Shirley and Merve, who have lived there for four years. Our room was beautiful. It was upstairs, spacious, and had a balcony with beautiful views.
It was still early afternoon so we borrowed bikes from the owners and rode out into the countryside. We passed beautiful farms surrounded by hills, and lots of sheep and cattle grazing. There was no traffic. We drove about four or five miles. Harvey’s seat came loose and tilted down toward the back, making biking a very interesting and somewhat painful experience for him, so we turned back.

We stopped at the store, bought some cheese, went back to our room and ate cheese and crackers, sipped wine and watched the sun set.
Oddly, this lodge in the middle of hardly anywhere had free, high-speed internet, so Harvey worked on the blog. After a while I went downstairs and started talking to a man who appeared to be about 40 and was the other occupant that night at the lodge. His name was Glenn, and he was an officer in the U.S. Navy, currently on leave from his assignment in Africa.

Later Shirley came in, Harvey came down, and Merve joined us, and we had a very pleasant evening talking about how Merve and Shirley ended up there, Glenn’s job (his specialty was communications) and this and that. Shirley had told Glenn that we were not sure enough people would sign up for us to take the raft trip, so Glenn signed up to join us. We talked into the night and eventually went upstairs to bed.