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Published: July 16th 2008
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When we woke up on our first day in Nelson it was sunny! Something we haven't experienced for about a week now. We headed off for a look round Nelson whcih is famous for its cafes and artists. There were lots of nice places to eat and drink which was good. In the afternoon we started driving up toward Golden Bay, on the northwest tip of the South Island. The drive was really scenic as we passed through Abel Tasman national park (where we were planning to go the following day). Golden Bay was very nice and we camped there overnight right next to the sea and beach.
The next day we set off for Abel Tasman, to do a hike around the coast. Abel Tasman has on of NZ's great walks, a five day effort over 60km, we were only doing one day of it though. We set off in brilliant sunshine but pretty soon the sky clouded over and the rain began....endless rain. There was no way we could turn back as we had to meet a boat at the other end, so we kept walking on, the rain now pouring down, we were soaked to the bone.
Abel Tasman Walkway
Beautiful day for a coastal walk Even our waterproof clothing was defeated.
As we neared the end of the walk we came to Torrent bay where apparently at lowtide you can walk across the beach to get to where our water taxi was supposed to pick us up (which was what we had planned to do with the walks office before we set off)....unfortunately due to all the heavy rain there were several rivers flowing across toorrent bay which we needed to cross. We ended up wading through the rivers and were completely soaked and freezing, looking forward to sitting on a nice warm boat back to Maherua (the start of the walk). However, when we reached the taxi point we were told that the anchor on our boat had broken and we would have to wade out into the sea to climb aboard......the captain helpfully added that we should take our shoes and socks offf so as not to get wet!....we didnt find it amusing
When we finally reached dry land again we headed back to Nelson and spent that night trying to dry all our belongings...clothes, shoes, passports, money.....quite tricky in a campervan.
Next morning...glorious sunshine! we headed off round the
Abel Tasman golden coastline
All hail the waterproof clothing coast to Kaikoura via marlborough sounds. The sounds were beautiful and we would have liked to have spent longer there. As we began to head off to Kaikoura there was a weather report on the radio which mentioned gales and heavy rain in the Kaikoura area. Nevertheless we carried on and soon found our poor van being battered all over the place by gale force winds while the rain poured down...again. Even the seals didnt seem too amused with the weather as there were hundreds of them on the rocks right next to the road.
We arrived in Kaikora and registered our names with the company we wanted to go whale watching with, although we were pretty sure there would be no boats going out the following day. We headed to the local pub and watched the all blacks play south africa.
As expected the weather was too bad for whale watching the following day so we headed round to the seal colony to brave the high winds and watch some seals. We started out on a coastal walkway but after 15minutes being blown backwards by the wind we turned round and admitted defeat.
The bad weather
Lunch on the beach
Just before the rain started was forecast to stay around for a few days so we decided to cut our lossses and head back up toward Picton to catch a ferry over to the North Island.
The ferry ride began brilliantly with sunshine and calm waters as we sailed through the Marlborough sounds. sal and I were sat up on deck enjoying the view. The captain came out on deck at one point and we heard him on his phone mentioning something to do with 13metre waves........
Sal and i had resturned inside the boat just as we reached the open sea, and an almighty wave crashed over the front of the boat, right where we had been sitting. The boat shook and vibrated and wobbled all over the place as glasses and plates went flying around in the bar....it was a little scary. The rest of the 3 hour crossing was pretty rough and lots of people were very ill. fortunately we seem to have strong stomachs.
Next stop north Island!
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