Fire!

We stayed in Westport. Before dinner we went to see a seal colony with the sea making some impressive crashes on the rocks. 

That night was quite an adventure. We stayed on a freedom camping spot right on the beach. There were 30 campers there which is a lot compared to most free spots. At 4am the camper behind us started honking their horn frantically. We thought it was a kid playing a trick for a moment but then we could hear them shouting fire. We looked out and there was a bush fire roaring right in front of us. So everyone started scrambling to get ready to drive off. We heard the wail of the siren that goes off here for a fire to alert the volunteer firemen. As I pulled off I gave lots of honks as well just in case anyone hadn’t heard the commotion but you could see everyone scrambling around to get away. We then parked up for the few hours till light with a line of us on the first bit of road going into town. Scary. 

We treated ourselves to cooked breakfast in the morning and then went on a little train in Charlestown that took us through the rainforest. 

We free camped by Maruia Falls as we travelled across towards Abel Tasman. A cute little falls but waaay too many bees in the car park. We were begging for sand flies!

In the morning the bees won and we left early! However the bees were still bad in Murchison where we stopped for brekkie. 

We stopped by Lake Rotoroa for a quick dip but the sandflies rushed us out of there!

We could finally relax in an awesome adventure campsite called Quinney’s not far from Nelson. It had loads of fun stuff for the kids and much fewer flying things to bother us. There were lots of play things like flying foxes, water slide and assault courses. Although feeding the ducks and chickens took a turn for the worse when two sheep and two pigs came bounding towards us ushering Olive and Selina out leaving me and Boo to entertain them!