You can't take a Seal Clubbing

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Our last stop on the North Island was Wellington, New Zealand's Capital City. To be honest Wellington is on the tour just a stopover before we catch the ferry to the South Island, so it was really a quick tour of the area. What l can tell you is that it had the feeling of Cape Town with its harbours and fantastic homes perched on the hills that surround the Capital. We even got time to drive up to the highest point to look at the 360 degree views.

Wellington - New Zealand's 3rd Capital City

The earliest name for Wellington, from Maori legend, is Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui. In Maori it means ‘the head of Maui's fish’. Caught and pulled to the surface by Polynesian navigator Maui, the fish became the North Island. Evidence of early Maori settlement and cultivation can be found at sites all around the Wellington peninsula.

The Polynesian explorer Kupe is credited with the initial discovery of Wellington Harbour. From Maori tradition it is estimated he arrived with his followers around the 10th century. Several places around the Wellington peninsula were named by Kupe - for example Matiu (Somes) Island and Makaro (Ward) Island. People have lived here since Kupe's discovery.

Te Whanganui aTara (the great harbour of Tara) is another Maori name for Wellington. Tara was the son of Whatonga, another Polynesian migrant, who had settled in Hawke’s Bay. Whatonga sent Tara on a tour of inspection of the lower North Island in the 12th century. After a year Tara returned and reported that the best place he had seen was ‘at the very nostrils of the island’. As a result Whatonga and his followers shifted south - the first iwi (tribe) in Wellington was thus Ngai Tara.

Ngai Tara eventually amalgamated with another iwi, Ngati Ira. Other iwi associated with the area were Ngati Kahungunu, Ngai Tahu, and Ngati Mamoe. Since the beginning of the 19th century iwi including Ngati Mutunga, Ngati Tama, Te Atiawa and Ngati Toa have migrated to the Wellington region.

Today the manawhenua (local guardianship) interests in Wellington city are administered by the Wellington Tenths Trust / Nga Tekau o Poneke, which comprises descendants from Taranaki iwi, of which Te Atiawa is the largest. Ngati Toa, by virtue of its boundary to the west, also has an interest within Wellington city.

Ferry across to the Southside

We leave Wellington to board the ferry at 7am for a 3 1/2 hour crossing to the South island. During the crossing you are never far from the rolling mountains and hills that form much of New Zealand's landscape. During this time whilst standing on the outside decks l managed to see some pretty spectacular scenery along the coast.

Once we reached the Southside we drove along the coastal roads and the Queen Charlotte Sounds and the Golden Beaches and coves.
Queen Charlotte Sound. It is, like the other sounds, a drowned valley, and like the majority of its neighbours it runs southwest to northeast before joining Cook Strait.

After a few hours we reach our next stop for the evening in the town of Nelson, named after Lord Nelson and was a great base for our activities planned for the following day. We stayed at one of the best hostels since beginning of this trip, although most have been pretty good. The Accents on the Park is a family run hostel filled with loads of home comforts and even a house bar. It was the turn of group B to cook tonight and gave us a great BBQ of steak, sausages and even corn on the cob.

Abel Tasmin National Park

As like most activities planned it meant a early start and this meant being picked up at 7am and the group was driven about an hour to the Abel Tasmin National Park, our plan was to Hike & Kayak with lunch included in the day.

For at least 500 years Maori lived along the Abel Tasman coast, gathering food from the sea, estuaries and forests, and growing kumera on suitable sites. Most occupation was seasonal but some sites in Awaroa estuary were permanent. The Ngati Tumatakokiri people were resident when, on 18 December 1642, the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman anchored his two ships near Wainui in Mohua (Golden Bay), the first European to visit Aotearoa - New Zealand. He lost four crew in a skirmish with the local people and soon moved on.

Permanent European settlement began around 1855. The settlers logged forests, built ships, quarried granite and fired the hillsides to create pasture. For a time there was prosperity but soon the easy timber was gone and gorse and bracken invaded the hills. Little now remains of their enterprises.

Concern about the prospect of more logging along the coast prompted a campaign to have 15,000 hectares of crown land made into a national park. A petition presented to the Government suggested Abel Tasman's name for the park and it was duly opened in 1942 - the 300th anniversary of his visit.

The most noticeable features of this park are the golden sandy beaches, the fascinating rocky outcrops (mainly granite but with a scattering of limestone and marble) and the rich, unmodified estuaries. The landscape has been modified, perhaps more than in our other national parks. The vegetation cover varies and reflects a history of fires and land clearance, but the forests are regenerating well especially in damp gullies where a rich variety of plants can be found. Black beech dominates the drier ridges.

The more common forest birds, like tui and bellbirds, can be seen along with pukeko around the estuaries and wetlands. The park's boundary excludes the estuaries and seabed but in 1993 the Tonga Island Marine Reserve was created along one part of the Abel Tasman coast. Like a national park, all life in the reserve is protected.

One of the most spectacular walks ever!

We arrived at the tour base in Abel Tasmin and we soon boarded the Water-Taxi that took us along the golden coast line passing a great tourist attraction in a small bay called the Apple Core. We then made our way towards a beautiful bay to start a hike towards a meeting point for lunch, so myself, Sara, Christian & Louise left the Water-Taxi and started our 2 hour hike along coves, mountains, waterfalls and great scenery. We stopped via a de-tour to see Cleopatra’s Pool which is an impression waterfall that flows in front of a large rock that looks like Cleopatra laying down with the milk of the waterfall flowing in front of her.

We finally made it back to one of the most beautiful Golden beaches l have ever seen since travelling, l know the beaches in Thailand were great with talcum powder sands and Phu Quoc in Vietnam's beach were beautiful, but the pure gold sand of Anchorage Beach was pure magic, so we spent a bit of time grabbing the sun before we took another hike to Watering Cove for our lunch stop. But when l say hike to the cove it was more like mountain climbing up the steepest mountain, bit the views from the top were out of this world.

Lunch was on a small cove with great chicken salad rolls, the biggest blueberry muffins l have ever seen and a much needed mug of tea. Once filled to capacity we then had a briefing about sea Kayaking which including putting on the wet-suit like material skirt that was attached to the kayak and a very comfortable life jacket. The good or not so good thing about sea kayaks is that you can steer the kayak from the back and the person at the front navigates. The only problem was that Sara was at the back and me, who can't tell right from left, was at the front. We left the cove and made our way to Adel Island that was named after Abel Tasim's wife. The both of us were the second to make it to the island. Whilst moving around the island we came across a group of baby seals. After about 10 minutes of taking pictures and watching them on the rocks the group started to make their way further around the island, unfortunately myself and Sara got stuck on a rock. But sometimes bad things turn out for the best and within minutes the baby seals were right up to our kayak and staring up at us from the sea, the both of us looked at each other thinking the same thing, are they going to attack us or not. But we soon realised that they were just interested in us and one even jumped up on the kayak then they all started to swim around our paddles. After about 5 minutes we managed to realise ourselves from the rock and made our way to the group who were about 500 minutes further round the island.

Why does everything look closer than it is?

We then made our way to the other side of the island to a small beach and stopped for tea and biscuits and a swim in the freezing cold, but clear blue water. Then it was time to make our way back to the dock from where we started on the Water-Taxi. This looked a lot nearer than l had thought and it took us ages to reach the shore. What did make it harder was the laughing between myself and Sara about "Long hard stokes" and that Ben & Dave had managed to lift our rudder from the water and spent about 5 minutes going round in circles.

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Photos

Mushroom
Was it Magic?