The Road Less Travelled We traveled to Mapua through Nelson from the Sounds in the hot afternoon sun between colonnades of scruffy apple trees, their burden of fruit ready to shed sparkling balls of blood dancing in the breeze & the road rides on to Mapua wharf & over there is Rabbit island, framing the river mouth with a slab of dark pine & on the other side — the motor-camp, nestled between huge trees, not meant for harvest just shelter & ‘clothing optional’ the café now spawns delicacies a small restaurant behind smokes fish & oysters & makes the best burgers around, yet here it was that another world existed & brave men ferried cargo across the teeming strait on timber boats the size of small trucks — even using sails & oars & people were withdrawn or deposited on these planks long-gone replaced, to make way for the new, repair the past from Mapua to Nelson . . . still in the sun the bay sparkles & a ...