ORCA!

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Our day at Abel Tasman was amazing! The water there is so blue and the weather was absolutely perfect. The kayak company picked us up in a shuttle and after a nice ride filled with Bob Marley music and bakery stops (our driver, Harold, rocked) we arrived at Kaiteriteri beach. There were 6 other people in our kayak group and our guide took us all up the coast until we reached a place called Split Apple Rock. It was a really cool rock formation where the softer stone in the center had eroded away until only the ‘split apple’ part was left. Maori legend has it that the rock was a giant sea monster egg that was broken in a fight between gods. Our guide told us a bunch more local stories about the places we passed, and on our way back to Kaiteriteri we stopped at a beach and hung out there for a while. There was a lagoon there too, which Sha and I explored and saw some interesting birdlife.

After lunch, we got into a water taxi that took us up the coast deeper into the park to a place where there were a lot of fur seals. We saw quite a few, including some cute little pups. The ride itself was amazing too. Everything was so blindingly colorful and beautiful, plus I absolutely love boat rides. Especially on tiny little boats like our water taxi. Weeeeee! After hanging around with the fur seals for a while, the boat headed back and dropped us off at a beach (Awaroa). From there we headed inland a bit and went on a 2.5 hour hike through the forest that took us back south to Bark Bay. I ended up having a long pleasant chat with two Irish people from our kayak group along the way. We passed Tonga Beach and the trail took us uphill so we got some amazing views of the coast below. The forest itself was really nice too - tons of tree ferns. Once we got to Bark Bay we had about 1/2 hour to relax on the beach before the water taxi came to take us back to Kaiteriteri again.

By the time we got back to Kaiteriteri we were pretty tired from all the kayaking and hiking, and talked about how full and amazing our day had been. We were just chilling on the beach and waiting for the shuttle bus when we suddenly heard Harold, the bus driver, screaming “ORCA!”. We all jumped up and ran down to the water’s edge to get a look at them, and when we got down there we saw Harold jumping on some guy’s boat and yelling for everyone there to hop on too. We figured the bus couldn’t leave without us now, since our driver was going too, so we scrambled onto the boat along with about 10 other random folks that had been on the beach. The boat driver took off along the coast in the same direction that we had kayaked earlier to try and catch up to the whales and we saw one of them just feet away from our boat within minutes. We turned off the engine and followed it slowly along the shore and eventually we saw there were two of them. One of them had a split dorsal fin and both of them kept coming right up to the boat and diving a lot. It was incredibly cool and everyone was so excited! I really couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and the whole thing was just totally unexpected. It would have been a great day as it was before we saw them, but the Orca were just the perfect bonus ending to our day in the park.

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Photos

Abel Tasman 001
Split Apple Rock

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Kayaking!

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beach in Abel Tasman

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Fur Seal

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Tonga Bay - Abel Tasman

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Kayak on the beach