Sea Kayaking Abel Tasman

---

31/01/07 - 02/02/07 Abel Tasman National Park

After a long day’s coach journey from Christchurch via the Kaikoura coast and Blenheim, we stayed over in the picturesque town of Nelson and enjoyed a bottle of the local Nelson Sauvignon Blanc.

An early start, as usual with these tours!! We were picked up at 06:10 and headed from Nelson over to Marahau where we packed up our tents, sleeping packs, thermarests, clothes, food and cooking equipment. It was amazing to see how all our gear fitted into the waterproofed hatches of our boats.

We paddled off in perfect conditions; crystal clear waters and perfect blue skies. ‘Brochure kayaking’ as our guide, Wade, named it. We paddled into glassy smooth lagoons, where the rain forest reached the ocean

To even out our body muscles, we did a fair bit of tramping (NZ speak for hiking) on ‘missions’ to Lookouts, where we could see the perfect crescent shapes of the bays.

On the second day, we had very different weather - grey skies and drizzle. It was perfect in the lagoons though, giving a really mysterious feeling as the raindrops fell in the still water around us and the low cloud clung to the forest covered hills around us.

But then how different the kayaking seemed out in the ocean. It suddenly felt like much harder work pushing hard into the sea and feeling like we weren't even moving sometimes. We felt exhausted and were pleased to arrive at our campsite for the evening. We went on at 2-hour hike up to the lookout over the bays, and explored the lagoon, collecting green-lipped mussels to grill on the fire. Supposedly good for the joints as NZ green-lipped mussel extract is sold in tablet form in health shops.

After dark, I went for a midnight, moonlit paddle with the guides, 40 minutes up the coast to a secret glow-worm cave. We got back at 1:30 and I slept perfectly through the night, however uncomfortable the bedding was!

Fortunately the next day was ‘brochure kayaking’ again with clear blue skies and hot sunshine. We sailed round the seal island and tried to snap some pictures of the seals without getting the camera wet. The wind conditions gave us a tailwind heading home so we rafted all 5 kayaks up and used the paddles as makeshift masts to kayak sail homeward, stopping off for lunch at the most picturesque beach so far- Fisherman’s Beach to lounge for an hour in the sun. Not a bad way to end a 3 day trip.

---

Photos

Building up our biceps
Very tiring on the arms on a 3 day trip!! Taking a worthy rest

Wade Ponders
Our guide Wade poses for the shot as if pondering how all our gear fits in the tardis like boats

Mini Island
On the edge of Fishermans Beach

A kereru
A giant Pigeon looking bird

Green Lipped Mussels
Freshly picked and allegedly good for the joints

Kayak Sailing
Rafting up and sailing home, a break from paddling

The group
...in all our paddling gear