Our patience in dealing with a few rainy days on the west coast was rewarded with a magnificent day today!! For all of you that read the blog and wished us better weather – THANK YOU! It was wonderful to have a day on the water in a beautiful park with the sun shining.
We started our day fairly early, arriving at the Marahau Sea Kayaking office at 8:30am. The adventure started with a 1.5 hour kayaking preparation lesson. When the guide started teaching us about how to get out of the kayak if we flipped, I got a little nervous.
Once we got our gear on, packed all our overnight stuff in the kayak (tent, sleeping bags, etc.) and finished the preparation talk, we were on our way for a full day of kayaking with our guide. Thankfully, we managed to get in a small group of 8 people (4 boats with 2 people each). After just 15 minutes in the water, the guide had all 4 kayaks in a row and we had a sail up pushing us along! It was fantastic! If the entire day of kayak was riding the wind with the sail, my body certainly would never get sore.
It was also our lucky day that we had the wind at our backs most of the way. The water was chilly when we hit some waves, or got wet with the water off the paddles, but for the most part, it was sunny and warm.
The guide led us along the coastline at Abel Tasman National Park from 10:30-12:30 and then we stopped at a beautiful beach to have lunch.
The lunch was surprisingly delicious! We had chicken sandwiches with picadilly sauce (which Colin really liked), fruit, juice, cookies, and an amazing piece of chocolate cake! After a meal like that, the last thing you want to do is continue kayaking. To help fight off food coma, Colin and I went on a short walk to a viewpoint to look down at the beach where we had lunch. This is our view:
The second half of the day was nice. We kayaked at a good pace, explored a lagoon (which later showed us the dramatic tide changes when it was completely empty!), and we even saw a penguin in the water! Unfortunately, the penguin dipped back into the water too quickly before I could get my camera. We finished kayaking at 3:30pm and proceeded to start the adventure for the second half of the day. We had to hike 12km to the next beach where our campsite was located. Since I felt all salty and sandy, we stopped at a freshwater lake where I was able to rinse off and change out of my bathing suit and into more appropriate hiking attire.
We were rewarded with some pretty amazing views along the hike and stopped a few times to rest our bodies, eat some snacks, and drink water. The hike was not difficult, but felt that way after kayaking all day and carrying about 20-30 pounds in our backpacks.
Once again, we were rewarded when we got to our campsite around 8pm and saw that it was just a few feet from the beach. We quickly put down our gear, set up our tent and had dinner. Before the sun set, we caught a few photos of low tide on the beach.
We tried to keep ourselves awake until 10:30pm, when the sky got completely dark to do some star gazing. I have NEVER seen so many stars out at night as I did in the park! There were so many clusters of stars they created a haze of white in places. Some stars where sparkling, others were just so bright. It was worth staying up for, that’s for sure!
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