Wow! It’s hard to believe that six and half weeks have gone by since we last updated our Blog. So, what have we been up to?
After leaving Anahata and a short stay at Pohara Beach, we travelled north towards Golden Bay, through Takaka, and on to Wharariki Beach (our most northerly point on our South Island travels) which has the most amazing sand dunes I’ve ever seen – some of which got in to my camera as I was rolling down them! It reminded me of being in the desert (Tunisian Sahara, Oct 2005) – apart from the sea!
From there we drove south and east again, back towards Takaka, stopping one night in a layby near Puponga – which didn’t smell! The next day, in Takaka, we managed to get tickets to the world premiere of “Music & Images from the Heart of Nature” – a multi-media evening with photos from world-renowned photographers Tui De Roy and Mark Jones, set to live music from Caitlin & Sika (who live on the same mountain as the Anahata Retreat). It was an amazing evening with some absolutely stunning photos. I hope the ‘7 Words Theatre’ productions I plan to produce are equally stunning. By extraordinary coincidence we also met someone that evening that Julie hadn’t seen since they were both on the same massage course in Bristol about ten years ago. Peter and his wife Linda now run the Health Food Shop in Motueka – small world! So, a few days later, we visited their shop and Julie had a wonderful massage from Peter before we moved on.
From Takaka we journeyed slightly north again to find ‘Shambhala’ – a backpackers that many had told us was well worth a visit. They are right! A very beautiful, peaceful, hillside, coastal setting with a gorgeous new group room for meditation and yoga, and lovely gardens including a Buddhist ‘tea room’ overlooking the sea – wonderful! We did a yoga class with a lovely lady, Murdita, who spends half of each year in NZ, and the other half in Greece, where she was born. She also teaches Satyananda yoga (like Anahata) in the UK sometimes. She was very interested in 7 Words and family constellations, and we plan to stay in touch – I’ve always wondered what it’s like in Greece!
Next stop: McKee Memorial Reserve, just south of Motueka, across the bay from Nelson. A lovely spot. Then on to Nelson where we spent several days staying with Chris and her family in their new home which they’d only moved in to the day before! We met Chris at Aio Wira back in November and she very kindly invited us to visit – which we did! Just before leaving Chris, Nelson, and the South Island, we were lucky enough to witness an amazing display of kite surfing at Tahuna Beach. If I was younger and fitter, I’d definitely have a go! Talking to some of the guys who were doing it, it isn’t something you can expect to master very quickly, and it isn’t something you can just have a go at. It takes a lot of training to master the basics. Great fun to watch though.
And so our month on the South Island came to an end after meeting yet more amazing people and seeing yet more amazing places – only some of which I’ve mentioned here. On 10th March we had a calm and pleasant ferry crossing back to the North Island, where our adventure continued .../
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