Bush Walk Bed & Breakfast Nelson

... sign of life. Occasionally we'd pass a fish-farm or an isolated holiday home, only accessible by water, but otherwise it's all untouched nature. The rain had dried up before we left Wellington, and in Queen Charlotte Sound the sun tried it's hardest to get through the heavy clouds. It make for a a moody backdrop. All too soon the 'Isle of Innisfree' was in sight of Picton. Ooops, I mean 'Kaitaki' again. You see, I'd just found the commissioning plaque and it seems the old ...

... also stopped in Punakaiki for lunch, which is not even a village, if you blinked you missed it but rather more of a tourist site and scenery. It has fine coastal scenery and it is best known for the wondrous 'Pancake Rocks' and their accompanying blowholes. So i was able to take the 20 min walk along the coast on our break and get a glimpse. It was raining however, so the view wasn't the most flattering but i was still happy to at ...

... at sea, we were off paddling out into the blue yonder...literally.

The first stop was a bizarre rock formation called Split Apple Rock so named because it looks like a tangerine.

From there we cut across the bay towards the outlying islands. The bloke who hired us the kayaks advised this was a fair old distance which, when kayaking in the open water, seemed to go on forever and he was not far wrong as the islands never seemed to come any closer.

We were ...

... Sandi called her mom on Easter from this beach. The next day we drove around (3 hours) to the north side of the park. We did a 13 mile loop along the northern tip of the park and back along the Inland Track. I added two miles by deciding to go to Separation Point, so it ended up being 15 miles. It was much more scenic and less crowded. I recommend skipping the southen portion and just doing the northern section.

We made our way to the Interislander ferry early Thursday morning. It was a large but efficient endeavor to get all the vehicles checked in and lined up to board the very large ferry. Finally it was our turn to drive up the metal ramp and Jessica exclaimed "Gotta get those cheeky bulls on the big metal ship Mrs. Boss!" (Australia movie reference)... very funny and very appropriate. Unfortunately, weather was not ideal and we had a lot ...

... Ark which was completely animal themed, and we watched the first installment of Lord of the Rings! (People were surprised it had taken us this long!) Greymouth is a small industrial town, with nothing else to say other than that it is filled with oddballs! we did not experience good Greymouth people, or maybe thats all the people they have! Up side the local Library had free internet!

AWESOME! What a day - highlight of the trip so far. Everything seemed to be falling into place when we woke up and peeked through the curtains to see blue skies and bright sunshine. Today was our Able Tasman cruise and I wanted the weather to be perfect... We met Rod Stuart at Stephens Bay for our Abel Tasman charter on the Taranui. It was only us and two other couples ...

This was a bit of lazy day. We drifted slowly over the sleepy, hippy town of Nelson filling up our new camper van cellar on the way. Nelson's great. The council provide free camper van parking in the centre of town, which also happens to be the local racer boy place, which was fun. We wanted to see some music so popped into a few bars where some gigs were on. This place was great. We actually realised that we hadn't been out of our van in ...

... not?! We wanted to walk to the face of the glacier, but due to the rain, they had closed it. Bummer, but we were still able to get a great view with great weather! Just check out the pictures! We decided, we would do another small walk the next day at Franz Josef, but the weather was ****** to say the least. It was pouring down rain most of the day, so we just headed straight ...

... by creme brulee for desert. No wonder I have put on half a stone on this trip. (And we're not even half way through!) The next morning was a sprightly 8am start and a 2 min stroll over to where our sea kayaks were getting set up. After some embaressing safety demonstrations involving myself and Emmet we were all set to head into the park and pray our kayak didn't tip over. Abel Tasman is NZ's smallest national park, only 225 square kilometres ...