Paradise seen

Heading over to the South Island on the ferry is an expensive jaunt, especially if taking a car as we did, but it does feel as if you're leaving one country and entering another so it makes it feel quite exciting. The last 45 mins of the journey are through Marlborough Sounds which consist of numerous channels that stretch out between headlands at the north east corner of the South Island. The coastline here is consequentially very convoluted which makes it scenic to go past in the ferry, but rather tortourous to drive! After leaving the port, we followed a road for an hour that had not an inch of straightness along it. Angie felt a bit like she was driving in a computer game.

01. Marlborough Sounds

We've realised now that we're pretty pushed for time, despite coming onto the South Island two days earlier than planned, so had to drive straight through Nelson, which is meant to be a nice 'arty' town, and on towards the tiny village of Marahau for our first night's stop. Our hostel (a lovely place with teepees in the garden and 3 fat cats) sits right on the edge of Abel Tasman National Park, which is our reason for coming to this rather out of the way peninsula in the first place.

02. Sunset

The Abel Tasman Coastal path is the most popular walk in New Zealand and is easily accessible at many points along its length by boat. The whole track takes 3-5 days to walk, but not having the luxury of time, we just did a 20km section of it. We booked a water taxi and arrived at their office at the stated time in the morning. It's not actually at the harbour but the boats are all there so you have the rather strange experience of sitting in a boat going down a road (they get pulled along sat atop a trailer, right into the water, by funky little tractors).

Everyone else in our boat was kayaking for the day and therefore were travelling further into the park than we were, so lucky for us, the driver offered that we could stay in the boat and see a bit more scenery and he would drop us off on the way back. We jumped at the chance. It was an absolutely perfect day and we were able to see the route we would be walking from the water. The scenery is fantastic here, with lush forest coming right down to golden sandy beaches that are nestled away among numerous sheltered coves between granite outcrops, all lapped by a turquoise sea. It couldn't have been more travel-brochure perfect. Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, once we had offloaded the kayakers, the driver informed us that he would take us by a seal colony on the way back!! Yes - we did get to see some seals, hard though it may be for you to believe! Of course, there wasn't nearly as many lolling about on the rocks as there would usually be, because yet again we had arrived at a bad time - the female seals were all hidden away in the undergrowth giving birth, how inconsiderate! - but we did see a few males flipping about in the sea. They were lovely. As an added bonus we also saw a penguin. Well, we were told it was a Little Blue Penguin, the smallest species, but to be honest it looked more like a big fat duck!

03. Lunch stop

Then we were dropped off at our starting point and set off on the long walk back to the hostel. Walking through the forest we got tantalising peeks at the beaches and coves down below, and although it was tempting to stop at them all, they were often a 15 minute diversion from the main path, and we had a full day's walking ahead of us, so we had to be content just to look. In the morning, we heard the mournful sound of the conch (a big shell) being blown and Maori chanting. If we tried hard enough we could almost believe this was the real thing and we'd been transported back into pre-colonial times. Actually it was groups of (mainly German) kayakers being treated to faux-Moari kayaking preparation as part of their tourist experience. Oh well. Later on in the morning we listened to the complicated melodic songs of birds that are just like nothing heard in the UK. And in the afternoon we were accompanied for miles by the drone of wasps - we kept thinking we would round a corner and walk staight into a swarm, but we actually only saw a couple of nests up in trees above the path. The sound reverberated around the rocky inlets though, and got quite intense at times.

04. Wildlife in the bag!

At lunchtime we stopped at yet another perfect beach and Angie decided it all looked too gorgeous not to get in the water. Yeah, right. Up to her ankles! It was icy and there was quite a wind coming off the water, so swimming was out of the question, for us anyway.

In the afternoon the path climbed up higher and we got spectacular views along the coastline. Mercifully we were spared being attacked by the sandflies that the guidebook and locals warn about. There are also sections along the track named Sandfly Bay and Mosquito Bay. As the sun began to sink a bit lower we detected their presence on the last beach we'd stopped at and made a hurried exit. Those people we've spoken to since that camped overnight along the trail got bitten badly. Moral: things that look postcard-perfect are not always so - don't think about that when you look at the photos though!

05. Kayaks

06.Frenchman's Bay

07.High tide route

08.Evening sun

09. Spit

10.Carving