Tourism business season showing early promise
Right: Visitor, Greminger Ernst from Switzerland enjoying a hand of Jassen in the Wholemeal.
You can tell the tourist season is upon us when the number of campervans starts to build up and you can't identify the drivers of most of the cars you pass. The cafés fill up with strangers and parking on Commercial Street becomes hard to find.
Tourism businesses we spoke to were uniformly upbeat about the coming season. Food and drink and accommodation providers especially said that their bookings for December were better than last year's figures.
Takaka's i-Site has become very busy and the queues are getting longer at the supermarket checkouts.
Two repeat visitors were photographed playing Jassen, a Swiss cardgame, in the Wholemeal Café last week. Werner Schoeb and Greminger Ernst from Switzerland are on their third visit to New Zealand. This time they are touring the South Island for about five weeks.
"We don't make a plan," said Greminger. "If we like a place, we stay for a while. Golden Bay is beautiful. Tomorrow we'll go to Totaranui and the next day we'll go to Farewell Spit."
Werner and Greminger said that the thing they liked most about New Zealand was the friendliness of its people.
Neil Wilson
