Abel Tasman National Park

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After 2 days in Christchurch, essentially spent acclimatising to the nearly antarctic New Zealand weather (but also having the bitter-sweet experience of watching the famous All Blacks perform the Haka, then go on to stuff our own national team), we headed northwards on the first leg of our Kiwi Experience bus tour. We spent a day in Kaikoura, where you can see whales all year round, and dolphins during the current season, but poor weather conditions meant the day-long boat trip was cancelled. We head back through Kaikoura on our way up to the North Island, however, so with kinder weather we will be able to do that then.

Next stop was Nelson, another tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There was little going on, which isn't surprising seeing that along the entire West Coast only 32,000 of the 4.5m NZ population live there. We changed buses to spend an extra day here and drove a hire car out wirh some of our fellow Kiwi Experience backpackers to nearby Abel Tasman National Park (named after the dutch explorer who discovered this part of NZ), where we did a 4 hour coastal walk taking in some of the many amazing views that New Zealand has to offer. We stopped for lunch on the beach, with ponds, hills and islands surrounding us, where we tucked into a feast of a picnic - fuel for our return walk, which included a brief stop at a local wood-carving store - an interesting break.

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Photos

Diving in Kaikoura
The boys take advantage of the calm seas to swim with Dolphins!

Seal Colony at Kaikoura
One of the hundreds of Seals to be found along the East Coast of the South Island

Kaikoura
Seal-watching with snow-capped peaks in the distance

Wine-Tasting in Marlborough
One of the Stops on the Kiwi Experience - we certainly made the most of the $1 vodka shots!

Centre of New Zealand
A short hike brought us to this plaque commerating the finding of the centre of New Zealand by Captain Cook. It's actually 70km away, but close enough I guess...