What an epic day! You need more than a day to see Golden Bay but we managed to cram in most of the highlights.

With so much to do, we got an early start. To get to Golden Bay from Mapua, you first have to cross the Takaka Hill, a long, windy, slow 45 minute climb up to 800m elevation on the Ngarua plateau followed by an equally long, windy, slow 20 minute descent down the other side. We had a couple of breaks, the first one unintentional when tree felling required all vehicles to stop for 10 minutes halfway up; the second much more intentional as we stopped to do the five minute walk out to Hawke's Lookout and admire the view over Riwaka, Motueka and Tasman Bay.

Our first stop on the Golden Bay side was at The Grove, a semi-tropical limestone forest with a walk up to a viewpoint over the surrounding countryside.

At one point, the walk made its way through a limestone gorge.

After eating lunch at a convenient picnic table near the carpark, we drove to the most popular tourist attraction in Golden Bay, Te Waikoropupu Springs - Pupu Springs, as they were known when we were last here 30 years ago. Here there is a pleasant 20 minute walk through regenerating native forest, past a huge old Matai tree before emerging onto a platform over the springs.

At 10m3 per second, these are the largest - and clearest - cold water springs in the Southern Hemisphere. Exactly where the larger non-cold water springs are in the Southern Hemisphere has never been explained to my satisfaction. Of course, photos never adequately display the colours, texture and volume but I present some here for your edification nonetheless.

If you look closely at the photo below, you can see a well-disguised fish, a kokopu or giant whitebait swimming near the bottom of the pool which is 7m deep.

From here, we drove further north through Golden Bay, past the settlements of Collingwood (visible in the photo below) and Puponga.

Our destination was Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of the South Island, almost as far north as Palmerston North. We parked in a paddock and walked two minutes up a small hill where a fantastic vista awaited us.

This, it turns out, is the northernmost point of the South Island. Even Farewell Spit doesn't quite make it this far north. While there was a fence on the viewing platform, to both the east and west there were cliffs with no barriers. This made for some dramatic photos but we were glad that the wind wasn't blowing as hard as it often does here.

Once we'd had our fill of the scenery, Mat, Liz and Linda returned to the car to drive the two kilometres to the Warariki Beach carpark while I chose to walk to the beach instead, over the Hilltop Track that was advertised as an hour's walk (but only took me 35 minutes, even with photo stops). Summitting the top of the first of several long, steep hills on the track, I was presented with my first view of Wharariki Beach.

This is, I think, a far better first impression of Wharariki Beach than approaching it along the track from the car park and I arrived on the beach well before the others. Along the way, I stopped multiple times to take more photos.

When I reached the beach proper, I discovered I was not alone.

I followed the seal along the beach and around a rock outcrop to a pool left behind by the outgoing tide. It was being used by the seal colony as a seal pup creche, with 12 - 15 seal pups having a wonderful time playing and chasing each other while their mothers were either off feeding in the surrounding sea or fast asleep on a rock ledge nearby.

Also there were 30 - 40 other tourists, all taking photos and videos of the seal pups. I did a wonderful job of keeping them out of my shots but now I wish I had taken at least one photo of them for perspective.

By now, Linda, Liz and Mat had joined me and, after we had all had our fill of seal pup watching, we set off on a walk down the beach.

The seal pups are the main attraction at Wharariki Beach but the beach itself is famous worldwide for another reason - it is the scene of an iconic Windows screensaver image showing the Archway Islands just offshore from the inside of a cave. As we walked along the beach we saw different perspectives of the two overlapping islands, both of which feature archways.

Eventually, we made our way to the famous cave for the obligatory recreation of the screensaver image. We discovered that the cave was already occupied, by a seal who slept through our entire visit and the steady stream of visitors who preceded and followed us.

Our duty done, we wandered back up the beach for a last visit to the seal colony before making our way back over the sand dunes and farmland to the car.

It was now late afternoon and we still had a two-hour drive, back over the Takaka Hill, to get back to Mapua. Before leaving Golden Bay, we stopped at "The Mussel Inn" for dinner, a simple but pleasant meal accompanied by the Inn's own cider and ginger beer.

The sun was setting as we climbed the Takaka Hill and the slow descent down into Motueka was down completely in the dark. We got back to our house in Mapua after a long, tiring but fantastic day. We'd recommend at least a day in Golden Bay to everyone touring in the Nelson region.