Kia ora! That's a native Maori greeting, similar to "Aloha" in Hawaiian. The only difference is that I've not heard anyone say or use it once the entire time we've been here. I suspect this is really a ploy for the locals to identify the tourists: "Kia Ora!" If they don't speak Maori here, at least most of the street and city names are still in Maori. This is not necessarily a good thing. During breakfast, Jon, our host at Grampian Villa, helps us chart our route for the day, "Just take Waimea till it joins up with Whakatu, then take that till you reach Motueka..." BTW, those were the actual directions. Picture me with my lips moving behind my helmet, trying to sound out the street signs while playing back directions in my head all in a foreign language! And after spending a day on those roads, I *STILL* had to look up the names again to type it out here. *sigh* I miss my GPS...  Nelson to Golden Bay and then back again It was a fabulous day though. We spent the whole day riding up almost to the NW tip of the South Island, a place called Golden Bay, then back down to Nelson for another night at Grampian Villa. Jon had mapped out for us a route full of great roads, climbing up and down tight and twisty mountain roads. It was quite chilly in the morning as we made our way out of Nelson, around 14C. As reached the foot hills of the mountains in the interior, it seemed that every field we passed was either full of grapevines, sheep or cattle. This is Marlborough County, world-famous for its Sauvignon Blanc. Doesn't really mean anything to me, but I thought I'd pass that along. I'm more of a lambchops and Big Mac guy myself...  Neda motoring it. The Sprint has a fairly aggressive riding position As we hit the foot of the mountains, dark clouds start to move in and tiny spots of water begin to appear on our visors and windshields. Which makes perfect sense, because we hadn't put our rainsuits on before we left. So to get a jump on what the weatherman predicted, we pull into an overlook and don the water-proof gear. As any motorcyclist knows, if you put raingear on before it rains, it won't. As soon as we were in our sausage-suits, the skies cleared up and the sun started to peer through the clouds. Of course!  Rainsuit drill. This is only a drill. If this were the real thing we'd be drenched right now. Our first nice road of the day is Motueka Valley Highway, a very picturesque road winding through the middle of two mountain ranges. Orchards and farmland line the valley floor giving us some great sights as we leaned our way left and right through 80km/h and 100km/h posted roads. This is my favorite road of New Zealand so far, and we've hit some pretty nice routes in the last few days.  Some sheep on the right for EnglishJ. I'll get some closeups for you later! Oh, behave! Motueka Valley Highway ends at Motueka (where else?), and we take the Takaka Hill Highway to Takaka. Are you sensing a pattern here? This 2-lane road climbs up a fairly steep mountain and the turns are tight enough that I have to take them at 2nd and 3rd gear on the R1200GS. Our reward for this hill climb are the Ngarua Caves near the top. Carved by underground waters a very long time ago, rainwater that seeps from above the caves form intricate formations of stalactites and stalagmites over time. The caves have to be locked to protect them from vandals and some visitors have broken off stalactites that have taken thousands of years to form. Remains of some dinosaurs were also found on site, which gives you an idea of the age of the caves.  Rocking the blue hardhats. I tried to explain that I wanted a full-face hardhat because I don't ride a Harley. *blank stare* New Zealanders have no sense of humour...  Very cool formations inside the cave. We've got hundreds of shots of these. This is the only one that turned out... :(  "oooooh... so scary in here...." What's scary is how good I look in a blue beanie  Our tour guide showing us some fossilized remains of prehistoric birds  Neda emerging from the hatch. I think this one was The Swan. Or was it The Orchid? The trip down the mountain takes us past Takaka to our lunch destination, The Mussel Inn. A lot of bikers stop by, must be a popular place to get food after a morning of twisty and scenic roads. I spy another red R1200GS rented from the same company GoTourNZ. My yellow GS is kind of growing on me. The Mussell Inn is a funky shack, with its part-bait-store/part-psychedelic decor and large flags providing shelter over the wooden benches outside where customers sit down with their bowls of mussels. We arrive late and Neda scoops up the last portion of mussels, which are the biggest I've ever seen.  We rode a lot today. No pictures of the really tight twisties, I needed both hands on the handlebars  Lunch at the Mussel Inn  Neda has huge mussels. She's going to Pahmp You Up...  Looking over maps at the Mussel Inn After lunch, we head towards the most hyped-up spot on this leg of the journey: the Waikoropupu Springs. There are 8 main vents of water underneath the springs, which shoot up a huge quantity of clear water, up to 14,000L/sec. It's not very exciting to watch from above water, it just looks like a rippling on the surface of the pond, but what is amazing is the clarity of the water. Underwater objects that look like they are just under the surface of the water are actually much deeper, due to the optical clarity of the vented water. Objects may be as deep as 60m and only seem like they are a couple of metres below the surface when looking from above. Um, neat. But the caves were more exciting.  YARS. Yet Another Riding Shot. Vineyards to the right of us.  Neda reading up on the forest around Pupu Springs. hehe, Pupu...  Duck foraging for food under the water. Boy, won't he be surprised when that fish that he thinks is just underneath his little webbed feet is actually 60m down! Poor duck!  But really, poor us: we travelled all this way just to see unexciting ripples in a pond? That's one of the jets of water sending clear water up into the springs. Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry, where we ride to the west coast to watch paint dry on the side of a barn door! It was getting pretty late in the day, so we high-tailed it back to Nelson. The weather held up all day, and I think I even added a little extra to the sunburn I got a couple of days ago. Yellow bike, red forehead... Score!  Feeling very Triumphant today!
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