Murchison

We had a leisurely start to the day at the POP stop called Famdam. The dogs enjoyed their walk through the vineyards with vines all laden with immature grapes. We decided to keep to our original plans and head off for Murchison.

We could not believe how widespread the planting of vineyards is – they go for kilometres and kilometres. We must surely drink a lot of wine.

Once heading outside of the Wairau plains though the earthquake damage to the roading is clearly visible with hold-ups from road works every few kilometres. The scenery though was spectacular with steep mountainous hillsides and braided, swift flowing rivers.

A real surprise was coming into Lake Rotoiti – breathtakingly beautiful with beech forests on steep hillsides surrounding it, and crystal clear water in the lake – no weed that we could see. Lots of tourists around though. Further on, Lake Rotoroa was similarly beautiful although a little more remote so not so many tourists.

 

 

We finally arrived in Murchison, which is really a very small but very busy town. All the South Island traffic goes through here now as it cannot get down the coast. Murchison is old fashioned and tries to make a feature of it.

The NZMCA has a park here so this is where we are staying tonight. It is very popular with around 50 motorhomes all parked here. The downside of Murchison is that it is not very dog friendly – nowhere to officially walk them and nowhere to be able to let them off the leads.