Kayaking and Kaiteriteri

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Up early-ish, and it’s farewell to Rodney, the Dane and DLT as I’m moving to a nicer all girls room tonight at the same hostel.

I headed off around the coast to the Abel Tasman national park. My first stop was Kaiteriteri, a beautiful little beach resort, voted by readers of the Guardian (aka the likes of Graeme Le Saux) to be in the top 10 beaches in the world. On this occasion, the Guardian is not wrong. It really is a stunning place. The tide was coming back in, and a little lagoon had formed where I thought I could soak my sandfly-wrecked feet. I sat down, and relaxed.

That was until I felt a sharp pain on my big toe and looked down to see a leech attached to my skin! Ripped the thing off and started cursing my clearly-too-sweet blood. 10 minutes later, same thing happened again. Kaiteriteri may be beautiful to look at but right now, it’s doing nothing for my skin!

I wanted to sea kayak here, so I headed further along the coast to Marahau, to check out the options. Turns out there are downsides to being a single traveller – you can only do a kayak tour if you’re by yourself. To take a kayak out on a freedom rental, i.e. navigate around the coastline unguided, you need to have a buddy. Elf n safety and all that. The tours leave first thing in the morning and by now it’s nearly lunchtime. Kayaking will have to wait for another day (I’d say tomorrow, but it’s due to pour down, and the whole appeal of kayaking was to paddle around the bays and stop for sunbathing on the golden sand beaches. Not the same in the pouring rain, despite what the tour sales people tell you).

Instead I did a solo mini-trek down to Split Apple Rock, a giant sphere of rock that has split cleanly down the middle and sits just out in the ocean. When the tide goes out, you can walk out to the rock however by now, the tide is in and all I can do is hike down to the beach and watch the kayakers paddle around it with envy.

I did the only thing I could think of to see the stunning coastline in action and that was to hop on a boat. The boat trip – a bargain at $44 – took me up past kayakers, beaches and islands before I had to hop off and then hop back on the return leg. The biggest of all the islands is called Adele Island. No it is, really – I was pretty chuffed at this and proceeded to point and tell anyone who’d listen that this was my island. The island is renowned for its birdsong – clearly it’s not my island, because I’d make sure it was a bird-free environment….

We saw gannets and fur seals (yes, more fur seals) before landing back at Kaiteriteri, at which point I headed back for Nelson. Washing and DLT-avoidance on tonight’s menu.

I avoided DLT successfully, however Richard, the creepy retired former-Brit-now-Queenslander, who I’d ‘met’ in the kitchen the night before, collared me in the laundry, to talk about sandflies for what felt like a lifetime. You do meet some weirdos while you’re travelling as well as the nice guys – Richard may well have fallen into the latter category but somehow he just freaked me out. He’d been rescued from a walk by helicopter the day before, which is how the original conversation started. Tonight it’s sandflies. I made my excuses and legged it.

Washing done, I thought I’d venture to my room. Juggling all my stuff, I managed to drop my laptop. Now, I’ve done this on countless occasions since I came away, to the point that the undercasing is cracked, the keyboard now separates from the base unit, and the screen sits at a jaunty angle compared to the base. Good move not buying a new one before I came away – this one has done me proud and has survived all the beatings I’ve given to it. From lying it on the backseat of the car and hearing it smash against both rear doors before hitting the footwell, to putting it in the boot and hearing similar crashing about. However tonight, it looks like the 9^th life has been used. I’ve dropped it on the battery charger cable, which has disintegrated on impact. Shit. I tried to fix it but I need a soldering iron – not something that made it to the packing shortlist. It fizzed, crackled, and then the laptop itself started smoking. I’ve properly wrecked it this time. However the old trooper still appears to be working, but just not charging. Time to investigate electrical stores in Nelson tomorrow…or else it will be the end for all things blog-related. Which may come as a relief to you all – you might all get some work done now rather that reading this!!!

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