Abel Tasman hike from Marahua to Coquille Bay

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Despite some more rain last night, the worst of it seemed to be behind us so we decided to drive to Marahua. This is basically the end of the road before you get to the Abel Tasman National Park. We decided that we would hike for about an hour. The weather held out and we had a nice hike. We checked out Porter's Bay and Tinline Bay before arriving at Coquille Bay. We stayed at Coquille Bay for a while. It was a nice sandy beach. Eventually, the kids had their shoes off and were wading in the frigid sea. Theo kept pushing the bounds of sound reason (imagine!). In order to keep some of his clothes dry for the hike back (we were a bit more than an hour into the park), he started peeling off layers until alas, he was skinny dipping on the day before the Winter Solstice. A day shy of being a true Polar Bear Club member. Ultimately the elements trumped youthful enthusiasm and Theo was forced back into clothing and we headed back.

We drove to the Split Apple Rock trailhead and brought our picnic lunch down the "15 minute" walk as posted on the sign. After the rest of us made it down to join him, Geddy informed us that he did it in 2 minutes and 20 seconds. We had our lunch with a view of the split granite rock that we had seen on our boat ride a couple of days ago. After eating, Geddy discovered a cave along the beach that we went inside. We could see glow worm feeding lines, but too much light was entering the cave to see the worms. We walked down the beach to get a better line of sight on the split in the rock before heading back to the car. For those keeping score at home, Geddy's time was 2:54 shattering my prediction of 5:10. It was a pretty steep and slippery ascent so the time was quite impressive.

Since we were driving through it, we made our obligatory stop at the Flying Fox zip line to have one last go at it. It's been a great time in Nelson, despite being in the midst of a record rainfall. We're off to the west coast!

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Photos

Rock writing
You see messages in the rocks all over the shoreline in this area. Due to the tide going out so far people have plenty of time to create rock messages.

Suzy Mushroom Study #?!
Tiny white mushrooms with water droplets falling off.