The Apple Stay Inn is an excellent value. Like many other New Zealand lodgings, it is not luxury accomodation, but it is comfy, homey, and clean.

The facility is essentially a "holiday park," with several standalone cabins as well as a number of spaces to park one's campervan. Of the cabins, some have bathrooms outside, while one unit (where we stayed) has the bathrooms inside.

Our cabin unit, the main one, had 4 bedrooms, 2 with a double bed, 2 with 2 singles. There is a toilet and a separate shower. There is a full kitchen, with refrigerator/freezer, electric range, abundant plates/cutlery/pots, dishwasher, etc. A bowl of apples from the adjacent orchard was awaiting us on the kitchen table. The unit has its own washer for laundry, with a drying rack.

The unit has a wood deck and a swimming pool (shared). From the deck, one overlooks the orchard and a small pond. You can borrow canoes to paddle on the pond.

But the most amazing room in the unit is the "rumpus room." This is a HUGE room, with a pool table, table tennis, large television, couches, recliners, dining tables, stereo, and a library of books. WOW. See the photos for a small sense of what the room looks like. My camera doesn't pan out widely enough to capture it all.

For the two of us, this was a HUGE amount of space. We only used one of the bedrooms, but we used the kitchen, the laundry, and of course the rumpus room. Cost for the two of us was NZ$50 per night, which was an excellent value.

The furnishings in the unit are a time capsule from various decades. Eames-era through the 1980s are represented here. All bedrooms come fully made-up with sheets and towels.

The sole complaint we had was the insects. -- they were nonstinging insects, mostly mayflies or something similar, which didn't bother us, but the bugs were attracted to the hallway lights. The unit, like seemingly every building in New Zealand, lacks window screens; for the most part, this was not an issue in NZ, but the Apple Stay is rather buggy.

The other complaint is that it was difficult to find, especially at night. The facility is 5km outside of the town of Motueka, in the Nelson region, but the sign on the roadside is quite small. Call the very friendly proprietor for directions.

We stayed here for two nights and used it as a base for exploring Abel Tasman National Park. I highly recommend it.

We found the Apple Stay Inn in the New Zealand Automobile Association guide, which we picked up free at Auckland Airport. The inn does not have a website, I don't think, and we have never seen it listed anywhere besides AATravel.co.nz. But based on the guestbook in the rumpus room, people have been coming here for years. There wasn't much information in the guide (or on the AATravel website) so we called the number and got a rate quote and directions by phone.

Apple Stay Inn
+64 3-526 6801
2739 Mariri, State Highway 60
Motueka
Nelson Region, South Island, New Zealand

Link to the AATravel.co.nz listing:
http://www.aatravel.co.nz/main/url-redirect.jsp?type=internal&listingId=49066&clientId=15613&url=../main/listing.jsp&style=