* Today it rained for the first
time in ~6 weeks; good for farmers, bad for our plans
* Our combo hike/kayak tour was cancelled, so we roughed it out in the rain on a ~4 hour walk through the beginning section of Abel Tasman National Park
* Stayed at Tasman Bay Backpackers in Nelson – very clean and nice hostel, great Wi-Fi, cheap laundry, but a little noisy
* Our combo hike/kayak tour was cancelled, so we roughed it out in the rain on a ~4 hour walk through the beginning section of Abel Tasman National Park
* Stayed at Tasman Bay Backpackers in Nelson – very clean and nice hostel, great Wi-Fi, cheap laundry, but a little noisy
The Good:
* Abel Tasman National Park is
beautiful – right on the Tasman Sea, there are plenty of beaches you can access
from your hike, and plenty of opportunities to kayak in the water to interact
with seals and other marine life
The Bad:
* It did rain which forced us to
alter our plans, but we still had a fun (albeit extremely wet) time out on the
hiking trail
Well I think the above says it
all. We went on a nice hike, but really
couldn’t take full advantage of Abel Tasman National Park because of the rain,
and unfortunately needed to move on to other things on our itinerary.
To get to the hiking trail, you
must take a water taxi to certain points in the park. They pick you up in the water taxi *on land*,
then drive you (as you sit in the boat) on the street as the boat is pulled by
a tractor to the water access point. I
know the country is experiencing a draught, but this is ridiculous! It’s hard to see, but you can make out our
boat driver on the back of a tractor as he pulls us through the streets of
Marahau.
And here is Carrie and me on the
boat.
Once on the water, we stop at
Split Apple Rock, the most photographed rock in New Zealand. Before the ice age, the rock had a crack in
it. During the ice age, water got in the
crack, froze, expanded, and eventually split the rock in two pieces. Fortunately, there were other rocks there to
catch the two pieces, and here we have Split Apple Rock! Remember what I was saying yesterday about
the sheer power of water? Yeah.
Due to the rain, we weren’t able
to take too many pics for fear of damaging our stuff, but here are a few choice
shots taken from the cover of umbrellas.
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