Happy German on his way from Hokitika to Harihari, easy 70km ride. Enjoyed it and showed up in Wildside around 3pm. Nobody of the owners were around but Hazy another traveler was. He showed me around, we had some beers, a cigarette and prepared dinner for the group. They went fishing and caught 2 big wild salmon and a trout. What a great catch. We were going to smoke it the next day!!!

Dan the owner is a hunter and fisher and also a great handyman. I could tell it wasn’t the first fish he caught and prepared, cutting the filets, curing them in salt & raw sugar. All looked so experienced. The salt helps to release some of the water in the fish and build a natural barrier that the smoke doesn’t go too deep into the fish…

The next day we setup the smoker, prepared the fire and cut the manuka chips for smoking. He built his own smoker, multi layer so you can put more filets into one batch. See below some pictures, was a great experience.

The salmon was so yummy, I could have eaten the whole thing…but I didn’t.

When i have my own BnB I’m going to build my own smoker too. For fish but even better beef jerky. Just love this dried meat…so great. If you produce it yourself it’s even better.

After two days I left and wanted Tom cycle into Fox Glacier, but Jake had another minor incident. Broke 2 spokes. Guess he didn’t want to go further with me but jump on the bus again. Maybe he liked the ride from Nelson to Hokitika so much – who knows. Haha