In Nelson, top of New Zealand's South Island visiting friends the Worsleys and my school friend Heather. Another easy spot to settle in with a good lifestyle, property prices inexpensive by UK standards, fruit and vegetables everywhere at bottom prices, ice cream, coffee and scones, beaches and oh yes, the sun. So will we leave? Read on........
Determined to do something energetic in the Abel Tasman National Park Jenni eventually found someone willing to take the weans out on kayaks for two days. Abel Tasman is only accessible by foot or sea, not a road in it. You can tramp right up it and book into their bunk huts overnight, believe me you don't want to be shy to stay in the huts. Once you are at the top you can call up a water taxi and get whisked away back to the start. How civilised does that sound when your blisters are fairly festering. What a brilliant job roasting about in a high powered water taxi up a beautiful section of coastline.
We set off with our double kayaks fully loaded with all camping stuff and supplies for two days for seven of us, Kyle our guide plus Dave and James from the UK.
Day 1 we saw lots, and listened to Kyle's story telling- true or bluff? on the way up the coastline to Anchorage Bay - our camp spot for the night. Kyle produced top end food for us including carrot cake, mud cake, pavlova, quite astounding what appeared from the bowels of the kayaks. He had us playing good games after dinner and he was excellent with J&K as were James and Dave.
Day 2 was wet when we started so it was on with the polyprop sexy leggings(see pic) and semit.
Kayaking in the rain was quite pleasant and seeing the coast in different lights was interesting. Morning tea/coffee and cake seemed all the better in the rain. We paddled out to islands where we got up close to fur seals and pups, watched a seal throwing a squid around for a few minutes until it was soft enough to swallow. There were bottlenose dolphins on the go too.
We finished the day in Barks Bay and were whisked away by taxi after loading on all our kayaks and gear. We didn't think that we had gone very far but you got a better idea of distance on the taxi. What was interesting upon return to the starting beach was that the tide was a long way out. In the water were about eight tractor and trailers. We selected ours and drove straight on. The taxi driver then became tractor driver and drove about .5km over the beach and back to the road to unload with us still in the taxi boat on the trailer. Back to base for an ice cream and an adult dinner out that evening. Steak seemed the choice having been out in the field for weeks now, or was it one night?
We stayed with the Worsleys for about 1 week in all and went camping with them too for a couple of nights. Although it's summer, we could see our breath one night when camping, memories of Scottish camping? The weather here too wasn't what they would normally expect. This is the one thing that we have consistently heard most places that we have been.
The Worsleys have kids of similar ages to ours - and a pool so the kids all used the pool lots. We were sorry to leave, but the North Island and Fiji beckoned!