Rolling Up the Sidewalks in Motueka

We arrived in Motueka at around 3pm, after an American-style drive of about seven hours. Today we were going to be sleeping in style: a family suite at a New Zealand hostel that turned out to be a huge room with five beds: one bed for Laura's stuff, one bed for Dan's, a big double bed to sleep on, and a single bunk right over the double bed for us to hit our heads on.

Motueka has a smallish tourist district, just a few blocks long, with some good ethnic restaurants, bars and shops. It's one of the primary base towns for tourists looking to tour the amazing Abel Tasman National Park.

We walked around town for a while, and once again stared in the shock only a Northern Hemisphere resident could feel at Christmas decorations hanging up in the middle of summer...


...and then we spent a few hours that evening uploading photos and pounding out blog posts on the past few days.

This little town was pretty busy by day, but when we ventured out at 9:30 for a Speight's beer, we were shocked at how quiet everything was. Restaurants were closed or closing up for the night, all the shops had been closed since 6 or 7pm, and only a couple of bars and a lone internet cafe remained open.

A local told us that this is simply how it is here. They roll up the sidewalks and everybody's home and in bed by 10pm at the latest. I like this thinking.

So we went home and went to bed too.