Day 10 recap (Fri Feb 18)

[Scott] Our goal for Friday was to get up to Abel Tasman National Park. This park is mostly inaccessible by road, and the photos of the coastline look incredible. The area is world renowned for sea kayaking, and so naturally that's what we want to do. Stef kayaked around Chautauqua Lake in NY when she worked as a lifeguard, and she says she loves it and can't wait to get to Abel Tasman. I've never kayaked but I'm looking forward to giving it a try. We woke up in our campvervan, and didn't feel completely rested. We woke up throughout the night with the campervan shaking a little from the wind. It seemed like we picked the windiest spot on the coast. The bed cushion is pretty soft though - much more comfortable than our hotel in LA! By morning the weather was calm and so we started driving toward Nelson. We pulled over after an hour or so and had breakfast on the beach. We then drove past grape vineyard after grape vineyard. This region of New Zealand is world renowned for their wine (one of many such regions here). There were signs for one winery after another - not huge billboards like in America, just little small signs at the turnoff. That's how everything is here, very uncommercialised. When we got into Nelson, we headed for the visitor's center to see about kayaking. We really lucked out and had the nicest woman help us plan our adventure. Actually I don't think it's luck at all, as everybody seems to be so willing to help here. Tourism is the country's top business, and they are really good at it. I could go on and on about how impressed we are with the work New Zealand's Department of Conservation has done across the whole country. Anyway, after asking us many questions about what we wanted to do, she started calling the various kayak companies. We wanted to do a two day catered trip - the price difference was totally worth just having them provide and cook all the food for you. We wanted to start our trip the next day, and it was looking like all the companies were booked and then about the sixth one she called had just enough space for us. So we paid for our trip and we were looking forward to this adventure. We got back on the road and drove about an hour up to Motueka and found a holiday park (campground). They had nice facilities there - we were both quite impressed. Much nicer than camping parks in the US. Stef cooked us up a good hot meal in the park's kitchen (so we didn't have as much cleanup in the van). We also took our showers using the park's facilities instead of our cramped quarters in the campervan. We've put about 500km on the campervan so far. After doing the metric and currency conversion, I think the price of fuel here is about double the cost in America. Food seems a little more expensive here. Most other things on average cost about the same as in America - and tax and tip are included. The US dollar has gotten much weaker here over the last few years though, as it has most places in the world. Just a few years back an American who traveled here would see their money "go a long way". I read in the newspaper that average home prices here have sky rocketed about 45% since 2001. They rank the cost of living here compared to other countries as seriously unaffordable, but the unemployment rate is the lowest in the world at approx 3%. Locals tells us that tourism has really been booming here in the last 5-10 years - with Lord of the Rings as one of the obvious catalysts.