January 28, 2026
We woke up to fog with the promise of a nice day ahead. Since we were staying in a bach, the New Zealand expectation is that we had to clean the cabin thoroughly before we left. This took about an hour. The fog burned off, and it was sunny by the time we left the cabin.
We drove down to the lakeshore to finally see the area with blue sky. We walked out to the jetty and saw eels hanging around the dock. I was surprised at how big they were.
Also near the jetty were a pair of black-billed gulls. A posted sign explained that these were the most threatened gulls in the world, with numbers rapidly declining. A flock had decided to make Lake Rotoiti their home.
We drove over to Kerr Bay which had several easy walking trails in the area. We took the Bellbird Walk followed by the Honeydew Walk. The highlight was seeing the pretty little Honeydew Falls.
We left Saint Arnaud shortly before noon. The drive to Ruby Bay was only 70 minutes. We stopped for a short walk to the entrance to Spooners Tunnel. This is the longest decommissioned rail tunnel in the Southern Hemisphere and is 1.4 km long. It is now part of a long bike trail, and several bicyclists passed us on the walk there. An added bonus was a small waterfall to the right of the tunnel entrance.
Next we stopped at The Bakery in the town of Wakefield, and we purchased steak and cheese pies for lunch. They were very good. We also bought some dessert treats to enjoy later.
Heinrich wanted to stop to see a statue of Richard Nixon (one of only two in the world) that was only a few blocks away from The Bakery. But when we arrived we found the statue had been removed. Such disappointment!
We drove to the town of Richmond to buy groceries for the next few days at the PAK'nSAVE store, and then we drove to our Airbnb rental in Ruby Bay. The house was perched high up on a hill above Tasman Bay, and wow, what a view it was from there! The owners were away so we had the entire house to ourselves, and we spent a lot of time on the deck eating our bakery dessert and enjoying the amazing view. We heard no car or people noise, just the sound of the many birds in the area.
Joining us were the three resident cats: Rascal, Tilly, and Gizmo. Gizmo was very shy, Tilly was somewhat tolerant of our presence, and Rascal was super friendly and wanted lots of attention. Rascal was a big fluffy long haired cat that liked to sleep on its back in the hallway. We could hear him snoring softly just outside our door!
In the evening I took a walk down the street that led to a nice viewpoint of the coast below.
