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Published: August 15th 2012
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![View of Geroges Bay View of Geroges Bay](//photos.travelblog.net/235045/732865/t/7104074-view-of-geroges-bay-0.jpg)
View of Geroges Bay
On our way to NelsonWe droveoff the ferry at Picton after a lovely crossing. The ferry sailed through Cook Strait which made for great views as the sun was going down. It was dark by the time we got to Picton so we found our holiday park and checked in before cooking dinner and chilling out before bed. We were planning on driving to Nelson the following day. Next morning, we set off on our drive to nelson which is a great little town. Our campsite was 4km outside Nelson in the valley, and only cost us $6 each for the night. Cheap as! It was still bright when we arrived it was still bright so we went for a walk in the valley and hiked up one of the hills. It was pretty cold but the views were nice. We headed back to the campsite and into the town to get some food in the supermarket to cook dinner. Back at the campsite, we cooked dinner and watched The Simpsons (sometimes thats all you need to cure a bit of homesickness!) and we also saw an add for Mrs Brown's Boys which looks like it's going global!.
It was a cold night, so
![View from the top of the hill View from the top of the hill](/pix/shim.gif)
View from the top of the hill
This was taken on the walk we took after arriving at our campsite in Nelsonwe filled up the hot water bottles and headed to bed. We were planning on going to Abel Tasman National Park the following day and needed to get up early. After breakfast the next morning, we set off to Abel Tasman. We had to take it easy in parts, as the roads were icy in patches. As we drove to Abel Tasman, we took in the beautiful scenery- we could see huge snow-capped mountains in the distance. We parked Red Dwarf after about an hour's driving, and by this time the weather had warmed up and it was nice and sunny. We decided to take a walk along a trail that went around the side of the mountain through the rainforest. The National Park is right on the coast, and every few minutes along the trail there were steps down to lovely beaches. We walked for a couple of hours before heading down to Apple Tree Bay to eat our lunch. It was way too cold for swimming, but we found some rocks to sit on and enjoy the scenery of the sea and Adele Island. There were loads of sea birds to look at, including oyster catchers, fantails, shags
and cormorants. After lunch, we made our way back along the trail to the car. We spotted some birds called California Quails sitting in a tree above our heads.
The rainforest reminded us of Jurassic Park- it's full of all kinds of ferns and epiphytes. We learned at Te Papa museum that NZ broke away from Gondwananland early on, so the forest is pretty much the same as it was at the time of the dinosaurs. When we got back to the car, we had some tea (thank god for that flask!) and started our drive to Westport, where we would stay overnight before heading to Greymouth the following day.
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