Nelson and Abel Tasman

On January 15th we spent the greater part of the day in Nelson, a coastal town on the top of the south island. its a really funky, artsy place with a ton of neat shops, glass-blowing workshops, bead shops, pottery boutiques, art galleries and stuff like that. trafalgar street is the main sort of street and is really nice to walk along. joel and i walked around for a while before stopping in a department store to pick up some sunhats. so far joel had just been wearing his white baseball cap that has been through all sort of hell, including getting ripped apart by his dog cyrus. so it wasn't really functioning for much at that point. we had a little moment of silence and joel hummed a little taps as he dropped his old hat into the waste bin. i do have to say it was a little sad seeing that hat go, its been his main accessory for about 4 years. but it was definitly for the best.

we caught the stray bus with our new driver, scoobs, at about 3 and drove on to marahau, a tiny little town (well not really a town so much as a few hostels and a camping sight) right at the head of abel tasman national park. we stayed at old mcdonalds farm (yeah. seriously.) for the next two night, where we got to stay in our tent for 10 bucks a night each. it was pretty sweet, and we woke up in the mornings surrounded by llamas on one side, cows on the other, and a peacock roaming around at our front door. mostly that place is crap though, and you definitly have to be well accostumed to cockroaches before staying there. but anyhow, we had fun the first night since a crazy british lady was celebrating her birthday and was pretty adamant about us drinking champagne and eating cake with them.

On january 16th, we did a full day sail on a catamaran through abel tasman. it was absolutely stunning. i did the half-day sail the last time i was there, and enjoyed that, but this one was even better since we got to see a lot of the coastline while laying out on the mesh trampoline. since i slept poorly the night before (it gets surprisingly cold at night in abel tasman, shocking considering how hot it is in the daytime) i must have slept a few hours on the boat. we went out from kaiteriteri beach and saw split apple rock before stopping at anchorage beach for lunch and a swim before heading on to barks bay and out to some of the islands. it was really lovely, and reminded me of being in the carribean, since it has that same sort of tropical island appearance in that part of NZ.

the next day we did a huge, amazing hike on the abel tasman coastal track. we hopped on a wilson's taxi in the morning, which is essentially a flat bed attached to the back of a tractor. in abel tasman the boats are brought out to see on the back of farm tractors, and this taxi was no different, forging through a meter of water to drop us off right on the boat. we took the speed boat out to Onetahuti (also known as tonga) and got dropped off on a beach with amazing caves. after exploring that for a little bit we hiked about 2 hours to Barks Bay, a beach along the track that is surprisingly crowded. we stayed there for a while, before realizing we had to book it to get to the pickup beach in time for our 5 pm pick up. after swimming a bit and drying off, we put our hiking clothes back on and hauled but over to torrent bay village, stopping briefly to take in the views and also stick our heads in the half-way pool. the views from the path are spectacular-- even just the forest views are beautiful, but at points you can see over cliffs to the water below, which is so clear that at one point we saw giant stingrays milling about. it was absolutely the most perfect hike. torrent bay at the end is the most bizarre little place, since bits of it were sold as private property before the park was established, people are still about to live there during times of the year, and it has an almost isleford like feel to it. but its in the middle of the park. so strange.

ok i gotta run and do some grocery shopping. more updates to come-- barrytown, franz josef, makarora... ahhh a lot of work ahead of me.

cheers!
alli