Saxton Island

This was definitely one of the best places, if not the best place that we stayed! Every morning began getting up with the beautiful Nelson sun beating down upon the secluded little island and the sound of the water crashing with the tides. One of the best things was being able to hear the constant roaring of traffic yet being able to look at them and say "whats the rush guys, I'm sure there's room to slow down"

First of all I should probably mention that Saxton Island is a small island off the coast of Nelson, that switches between a fairly large land mass and very small one due to the 4 metre tides of the area.

It had 3 houses that were accessible to one other at low tide but at high tide all become there own small islands. The house we stayed on was owned by this fella called Bunj and he had set it up with solar power, tank water so it was pretty similar to our home on Great barrier Island.

Another one of the great features of the island was the outside shower! It was pretty epic to stand naked in a warm shower over looking the busy motorway into Nelson.

So anyway the first day was actually spend off the island, as we had volunteered to do tree planting up by cable bay, after four hours and we had planted 700 trees which I personally thought was a good effort for 6 people to do. However the project has a total of 22,000 plants that need to go in so hopefully some people start showing up for it!

After the tree planting we decided that the island needed to be restocked with food, now seeing as all three of us were pretty poor and the fact that Geoff refuses to eat any supermarket food unless he has to, we had to get the biggest bang for our buck! Therefore we drove up to Richmond where these three brothers sell fruit and veggie's at the lowest price around, all of it top quality organics at a price half of that in the supermarket. Below is a map of where it is and the amount of food we got for $25

After a huge veggie feed, the tide was low and we were all super keen to put Geoffs new net out so we did. The only problem was that it was 4 pm which meant we'd be getting up at 4 am to collect the gear and some fish. As per usual we all were having the best sleeps when morning came. However our desire for fish was greater so we headed out into the cold morning. The mixture of being dark and cold reeked havoc on our bare feet as the cold made them super sensitive to the sharp rocks they we couldn't see. Upon arriving at the net we were super excited to see that we had caught 2x Flounders 1x Barracuda (yes we ate it and it wasn't as bad as you'd think)  x2 Snapper and 1x Kawai, we folded the net and carried the gear back to the house. For some reason the fish look really small in this photo!!! I assure you though they were easily legal.

After posing we put the fish in a cool place as we were to tied to fillet them and would be eating all the food regardless of taste. Once the sun began to rise we were back up and filleted the fish.

We then spent a good portion of the day was spent helping Bunj clean his boat, collecting fire wood, playing golf and absorbing sun rays. I love island life! The following are random videos of us playing golf.

That night brewed up a huge batch of Kawakawa tea and sat around telling stories, reading stories and playing cards.

Reading stories of the Ananke

Reactions to my story telling

The next day Bunj brought up his yacht and beached it on the banks of the island and we helped him clean off all the growth upon it (note to dad we now have experience in doing this so we'll have no problem doing our yacht) it was sparkling at the end of the cleaning.

That night there was an island get together. It was funny because everyone was drinking a lot of alcohol except Geoff, Wolf and me, who had nothing because we were all over drinking and wanted to prove to the oldies that they could have a mean time without it. We fully showed them up in rowdiness and it was a pretty crazy night..... We did drink alot of Kawakawa tea though and I'm pretty sure it gets you going a bit even though I don't think its suppose to! Anyhow after everyone left we played a few games of competitive scum and when we finally got Bunj into scum we decided to head to bed.

The boy's with Bunj who has the scum mask

The next morning we dived down underneath the yacht and cleaned the side that it was beached upon, it was pretty fun as we hit the tide on the outgoing so had to attach ropes to keep us from being ripped away (remember there's a 4 meter tide) and when we would let go in seconds we would go from the front to the back!

We then spent most of the day fixing the roof, digging a huge hole and watching Geoff and Hohepa fill it with shit from the long-drop. Good work everyone!

Then later that evening we headed into town to do some busking, Geoff with on the tin flute, Wolf was playing harmonica and I was jamming the uke. It was so much fun playing and getting people involved. Unfortunately there was hardly anyone around! However we still made $5 and a dude told us our music was beautiful shot bro :) Hahah we probably could have made around $50 if we were jamming around 1 pm. The only bad thing was that we were dropped off in town and had to walk back back to the island which was 20 km away :( although half way we realised Bunj's house was pretty close and he ended up lending us his car (we would have walk the whole way but Geoff's ankle was owned and wolf and me had sore knee joints)

When we got to the boat we realised the tide was heading in which meant paddling was going to be hard in the little boat. However our chanting and singing got us through it! our lyrics when't

There's a fire in the dingy, there's a fire in the dingy, there's a fire in the dingy and it burns!!! (I think it was something like that)

The next few days consisted of more sun, netting fish, music playing, reading etc............
and then we left! Aiming for Punakaiki, where we aimed to meet up with Geoff and go bush.