Stage 22

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On the way here from Kaikoura, some of has had to have a one night stop over in Nelson as the bus was too full to go all the way. There's not much to see apart from a marker on the top of a hill, depicting the geographical center of NZ.
The six of us who stayed in Nelson got on the bus the next day to find that all the dorms were full in the only camp in Abel Tasmen (which is a national park) and that we had to sleep in a tent! We were there for two nights and on the second night a lot of the dorms were empty so we snuck into a few of them and stayed there, still only paying the tent price and robbing them of a whole $7.
We had one full day so a few of us caught a boat taxi up the coast, planning to do a gentle three hour walk back giving us plenty of time to be ready for what we were doing in the afternoon. As it turned out we got off one stop too late and realised when we were half way home that we were on the five hour walk. So the rest of the way we were going like them walkers in the olympics. We did manage to get back in four hours just in time to do our afternoon stuff which was a flight in a MICRO-LITE PLANE! It was absolutely amazing, we went upto 3000ft totally exposed to the elements. It wasn't nearly as frightening as I thought it was gonna be, just a big buzz. I think my next new years resolution is gonna be to get my micro-lite license. We were up for about 40 minutes and it's definately one of the best things I've done.

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Photos

Micro- Lite
Suited up and ready for take off!

Abel Tasmen
Birds eye view.

Abel Tasmen
...and again