The Road Not Taken

Unfortunately I am very tired today after my rafting trip to Abel Tasman this morning. The reason I am tired is I did not go to bed again until 3am….I know, you are all shocked…

I do have photos of the trip but I will have to post them when I get the use of a USB machine. The trip through the park was great! There was a fair wind so the guide (Pete) asked if we wanted to sail the first leg and we all decided we would love to start with that so the sail went up.

It was a good lazy start for me being so tired from the night before. As it turns out many places in the park are sheltered from the winds and make kayaking a dream here. When you get out of those sheltered bays it becomes harder and the waves are choppy but that makes it fun too.

We stopped off at a small beach and dragged our boats up on the sand while Pete brewed tea, coffee and hot chocolate along with a selection of biscuits, his own faves being the ginger nuts which ” are great for dunking” he added.

Hot choccy on a beach was a new one for me…

We paddled more along the coastline of the park and saw a few seals on the rocks. We stopped at a beautiful beach (pics to follow) for a great lunch and general lazing around. I took a few shots through the caves at tge end of the beach and then lay on the beach while others (only 6 punters in our group) walked up the track for a view of the bay and Pete and my kayak partner for the day, Michael from Denmark, got busy with the frisbee.

It seemed like hours before we got the kayaks ready for action again and futher along the coast we got some seals playing and swimming near our boats. Heading in for the last part of the trip the wind was against us and we had a hard time getting back in.

The ride back to the bus was by water taxi. We had a big ginger bearded Scot who hates Aussies and enjoyed dropping one of the guides (an Aussie) off in chest deep water for him to wade in to the beach. He could have got much closer but hey, “he’s only an Aussie”.

I have a plan….

I am going to fly to Auckland and then fly on to Pahia further north (flying due to time constraints rather than a love of the prop planes here) I will try to book a day out sailing around the Bay of Islands and then return to Auckland and stay on Waiheke Island for a few days before flying out to Sydney.

I will be very sad to leave New Zealand. I really feel like I am beginning to get used to being here. Kiwis are great. I hope I find the Aussies as friendly and hospitable and full of character, let’s wait and see eh bro!… :0).

Tags: New Zealand

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 11th, 2004 at 10:25 am and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.