Abel Tasman National Park,
New Zealand
Saturday, May 20, 2006
We hoped that the weather was nice today and yet again a cloudless sky for our walk in the park. This had also been recommended to us (by Andrew and Deb = thanks guys!) and was definitely worth doing. We got the 9am water taxi and were first taken to see Split Apple Rock (in all NZ current ad campaigns apparently) before going up the coast to be dropped off at Tonga Bay. Before that though we had a look at Tonga Island, a fur seal colony where we saw seals and their pups being nursed which was great and also a load of little silver fish jumping out of the sea followed by an albino blue fairy penguin (the smallest kind in the world apparently). Into the bay we had to take off our shoes and paddle to shore - water about 14 degrees apparently. Walk took us across the bay and through forests to Bark Bay which was also an estuary and we had to clamber over loads of rocks and jump over streams to get to the other side of the beach and have our picnic. Walk was nice, although mainly in the trees, but the views of the secluded bays, spits, estuaries etc were fab. I thought I had seen as many nice beaches as I could but these were better and completely unspoilt and virtually no tourists at the moment.
Got picked up by our water taxi home at 3.30 to return to the van where we drove back to Nelson. Part of me wanted to stay and do the whole Abel Tasman walk which takes several days but weather due to break tomorrow. Eventually found somewhere to camp in the dark - could hear water lapping behind the van and in front of it which was a bit disconcerting!
