Day 11-12 recap (Sat-Sun Feb 19-20)

[Stef] * Disclaimer* In my recap of the Abel Tasman experience, I will do my best to not sound like a travel brochure. Abel Tasman National Park is a must do for all travel itineraries. It has a variety of ways to see the park for all fitness levels. The unique aspects of Abel Tasman are that it is the smallest of the National Parks of New Zealand, yet the busiest. In American standards, still not what we would call “busy”, but that’s a good thing! Another interesting part of Abel is that it is only accessible by water OR on foot. There are no roads, not even access roads into the Park. The hiking is rolling and follows mostly along the coast. A great fact about New Zealand is that there are no animals, insects or otherwise that will harm or fatally wound you. It is great to be able to hike, camp, or swim without the threat of sharks, spiders, bears or mountain lions. Because not everyone has youth or fitness on their side, “Water Taxis” are a great way to see the park too. It will take you to a beach for your picnic lunch or will give you a tour of all that the dramatic coastlines and uncharacteristic tropical blue waters have to offer. It also has the largest underwater national park, as the Marine Reserve within its boundaries was founded to protect all animals and respect marine life through education, research and preservation.

For the history buffs in the audience, I will tell you that Abel came about in 1942. A woman who lived there (her name escapes me) was petitioning to make the area a National Park. Since the Second World War was raging in Europe, the New Zealand government did not have time to look into funds for another national park. After much frustration, she wrote a letter to the Dutch Government posing as a member of the New Zealand Government. She explained where the area was and asked to name the area after the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman. The Dutch Government was overjoyed by the prospect and quickly wrote back and told New Zealand they would love to be part of it and wanted to know the opening date so that they could be there for the ribbon cutting. Fearing the backlash and embarrassment, the Kiwi gov’t could not refuse and say it was a fraud, so they were forced to name it Abel Tasman National Park. And so, Abel Tasman was founded.

As for our kayaking adventure, we met at the beach on Saturday morning. We met our guide, Blake, and the other tourists up for the challenge. A German couple, an English couple, and two English women, traveling separately, made up our group. We loaded our kayaks, smothered ourselves in sunblock, had an instructional session and then set out. For the sake of our marriage, I let Scott sit in back so he could steer. Although the current was against us, (we were going North) the water was so calm I thought maybe we made a wrong turn and were at a pond. It was amazing how easy it was to paddle through and enjoy the landscape. The water was what the Kiwi’s call warm. I call it Arctic. But I guess that’s trivial. I enjoyed the water splashing on me since it was refreshing from the sun beating down on us. Although the air temperature was about 70, the sun is very hot here. The locals tell us that there is a hole in the ozone layer here over New Zealand.

Scott and I were a great team, but we were pretty out of control. Scott didn’t have the pedals adjusted to steer us correctly at first. We were really fast but we would run into things – mostly the other kayakers. We ran into the German couple so many times, for a bit I was afraid they were plotting an attack on us in our sleep. They didn’t seem even slightly amused when for the 10^th time we slammed into their boat and sheepishly apologized. We kept joking that everyone was thinking, “That’s so American of them, fast and out of control!”

We paddled for about two hours before we stopped for “morning tea”. Luckily on one of our last slams on the German boat, we exchanged more words then “sorry”. They were waiting for us on shore and came right up to talk. Scott said he felt like the “popular couple”. The woman, Anne is a student in the south of NZ for a semester. Stephan, her boyfriend, is an Engineer. He studied at Georgia Tech, so he was excited to talk to some Americans. Our guide Blake was kind enough to make tea, coffee, or hot cocoa and provide chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps during our morning tea. It felt weird to have a hot cup of tea on the beach but it tasted great after all that rowing. We set back out for another hour or two before we stopped for lunch. Blake quickly got busy making us each 2 kebabs of beef. Our side dishes were fresh leafy green salad, a cold rice salad and coleslaw. Also, we had dinner rolls as big as my head and a cup of orange juice. It was all very good. We ate until our stomachs bulged. We layed on the beach and soaked in the sun, walked on the beach and just enjoyed our time. Blake made some hot drinks for anyone who was interested and then we set out again. The wind had picked up a great deal and so rowing was a lot more work. Before leaving after lunch, Scott adjusted his pedals and the steering was much better. We didn’t run into people at all after that. Scott and I set a faster pace and were leading the group. We got to a bend before our final destination and misread the signals from Blake on which way to go. The signal for “turn around”, apparently, was to point to the left with both arms, and then quickly back to the right with both arms. (Something he hadn’t gone over at all in the introduction). When Scott turned around, he saw the arms to the left. Then I turned around and saw them to the right. We didn’t know which way to go, so we just decided to go straight. Scott said he felt like he was misinterpreting the signals because we were headed straight for an island a long way out in the middle of the ocean. We continued on as I got soaked by each wave coming at me. Finally I turned around again and saw the backs sides of our group and Blake waving his hands (apparently he was also blowing a whistle). They had turned and Scott and I were off to cross the pacific. So, we maneuvered ourselves back and rejoined the group. Man, we were tired after this diversion! Blake told us he was just about to paddle out to get us, and was praying that he wouldn’t have to. We had many good laughs about this with Blake over dinner. Luckily we were heading into a calm cove to stop for the night. It was yet another beautiful beach. This one I liked the best. The sand was so soft. The name of the cove is Anchorage. We made plans to hang out with our new German friends and set off to set up our campsite with Blake. Blake showed us the spot he liked and we set the tents up while he prepared our post-rowing snacks. We were the only couple to opt for camping. The other choices were to sleep on a boat or in a cabin. Blake told us the boat is much like the life of a sailor in bunk beds and cramped quarters and the cabin is a big room where everyone sleeps within inches of each other on the floor. We were excited about that. We were also the only ones who wanted to have our meals catered so we didn’t have to worry about lugging anything. Sure glad we did! We had sweet biscuits (cookies), carrots, celery, chocolate, licorice, pretzels and hot beverages. After our “snack” we went down to the water to swim. We touched the water and decided a sunset walk would be better. After our walk, we took a freezing cold shower by the beach to get the salt off and then headed back to our campsite for dinner. Blake prepared a curry vegetable chicken dinner over rice. YUM! We ate like it was our job and then had some hot beverages. By this time, the Germans had come over to visit us at our site. They were staying in the cabin and said it was a tight fit, but not terrible). We sat around and laughed at the silly differences in the world of driving – you can only imagine what a couple of experienced German Autobahn drivers thought of New Zealand’s winding 100km/hr roads! Blake, turns out, is an Australian from Melbourne, and had lots to share about his travels and coincidentally he hopes to be a ski instructor in Colorado next season. He also has big hopes of going to America to eat. He has seen the American cuisine on TV and is pretty excited. I asked him what he thought he would want to try first, and he said a foot-long hotdog with all the fixings at a baseball game. I can’t say I blame him, nothings better than that on a summer day. We laughed and enjoyed the night until the bugs were too much and went to bed.

Our tent provided the essential on a camping trip – shelter from rain or wind. That is really all it had to offer. They gave us their version of “thermarests” to sleep on. The padding was not more than a quarter of an inch thick. It was a very long night trying to sleep. We hadn’t slept on anything this hard since our stay in California! But we managed to get some sleep.

In the morning, Blake was busy making us French toast, cereal and some other breakfast type food. Blake told us that French toast is a crowd favorite. Most campers love it and he never sees anyone eat it the same. Apparently a Scottish girl ate it the way he called “savoury”, with salt and pepper on it. Blake liked to spread jelly on it and eat it with his hands – like a piece of toast. Our way, fork and knife with tons of maple (they say Golden) syrup was new to him too.

We cleaned up the camp site, got some fresh drinking water and headed out to the beach. We were joined again by the English couple. The Germans headed out on a hike, so we said goodbye to them while cleaning up the campsite. Our new tourists were a father-son team from Germany, a young Japanese man, and another couple – the man was from England and the woman was, oddly enough, from Cheektowaga, NY. Scott and I felt this was amazing, especially since we had not met a lot of Americans yet. She didn’t seem very impressed, so that pretty much ended any budding relationship there. Another guide joined us today as well. He was a Kiwi and we never really understood what his name was – the accent was quite strong – but we think it was something like Coyden.

The wind was much stronger today and so we had to really work hard. Scott and I decided that on a windy day, going North, in a kayak is like running uphill on our hands. We got through it though. We circled around an island (Pinnacle Island) about an hour into it. The rocks had about four or five seals enjoying the sunshine. They have built a colony in two different locations in the park. We continued on and had our morning tea. This time we were lucky enough to have a chocolate cake with our cookies and tea!

After tea, on our way to the final location, we got to see a seal in the water next to our boats playing. It was so adorable. It was an adult female, according to our guide. We went on to our final location, which was really a beautiful beach. The water was really blue-green in color. The rocks were covered with baby muscle shells along the coast line and it made a really beautiful black carpeted-look to the shoreline. There was a little a spot for snorkeling and exploring the life growing on the rocks. We had about 2 hours before our water taxi was coming, so we were going to have lunch and hang out. The lunch was the same as the day before, and still really tasty. Some of the tourists got a game of Frisbee going, others hiked around in bush behind us. Scott and I went to the water (I finally got in and acclimated myself to the cold!) We walked on the rocks and looked at all the different sea life around the rocks.

Finally our water taxi came, it wasn’t a very big speedboat, and they loaded all of us plus three or four other hikers PLUS all the kayaks. It was remarkable how they got all the kayaks on there! They never fell on the ride home either… I guess they are professionals! The boat operator was a really interesting guy. He was telling funny stories and showing us a closer look at the seal colony. He dropped us all off, and we caught our bus back to the car park. What a great adventure! Scott and I drove to Westport that night and got powered site at a campground there just after 10 PM. What a long day!