The drive from Nelson to Abel Tasman National Park was nice. We were at the top of New Zealand's South Island and the climate was much more wine-and-sun and less sand flies-and-rain. Palm groves were mixed with vineyards and there were a huge variety of fruit trees all along the road. We made our way along the shore to the town of Marahau where we planned to stay for the evening. I had booked a cabin at "The Barn" the month before. Well, when we went to check in they couldn't find our reservation. Without an ounce of worry, I asked "The ORGANIZATOR," my wife, for the neatly stacked and filed computer printouts of all our confirmations. The note from the hostel clearly said "see you on the 18th," and the copy of our bank statement showed we had prepaid for the night. I checked on the calendar in front of me and indeed it was the 18th. For a few minutes the lady behind the desk did a little searching and then returned to tell me that I had indeed made a reservation for the 18th....but for the 18th of January instead of the 18th of February. I checked it and she was right. Sheepishly I gave her my credit card and had to paid for another night, but fortunately the cabins were only $45/night. The Barn was a weird place. It had a random smattering of tiny cabins each with nothing more than just a bed (no electrical plugs and just one microscopic light), and a tiny amenities block with just two showers in the bathroom and four gas burners in the kitchen.
After that Lindsay and I walked down to the beach and hung out for the rest of the afternoon. Returning to the cabin, we were about to shower and clean up when a bus load of sixty 18-25 year old Europeans pulled up and all hell broke loose. Imagine cases of beer, jumbo-sized packages of BBQ chicken, twenty people making a mad dash to the shower, radio music blasting. You know you are married when a hoard of bleach blonde, beer swilling, foreign chicks pisses you off more than excites you. So me an' the misses waddled over to save a spot at a gas stove so those foreign whippersnappers didn't use them all. Despite the mayhem in the kitchen, we actually made a wonderful fresh veggie pasta dinner and shared a good bottle of wine before heading off to bed.
The next day we drove down the street to the kayak shop and got oriented with a group of 8 other kayakers. After a brief kayaking "lesson" in the shallows, we loaded all the boats into the water taxi and took off up the coast to Tonga Beach, where we would get dropped off to start our overnight kayak adventure. Every brochure of Abel Tasman National Park shows two overly tan people calmly kayaking over glass-like green blue water with big smiles on their faces (see above). As our water taxi jumped up and down over the enormous ocean swells and through the gale-force wind and rain, I thought of those brochures. One look at Lindsay and I could tell that the last thing she was doing was smiling. We knew there was supposed to be some mild winds that day, but these conditions were wild. We landed the kayaks at Tonga Beach and precariously took off on the water. With a LOT of effort, we quickly crossed open water to the relative shelter of Tonga Island, where we watched the local seals and seal pups play around in and near the water. We even spotted two penguins in the water along the way.
From Tonga Island there we hugged the coast, exploring the many inlets and estuaries along the coast. Many of them led up river quite a way inland. It was beautiful. At one point Lindsay and I had to power though some crashing waves to get back out of the estuary to sea, and despite almost getting tossed in the drink, we made it. In fact, this trip had a special significance. Lindsay and I have been on many canoe/kayak adventures. We have paddled around alligators in the Everglades and in the crashing waves off of Panama. This however was the first water-based trip that we didn't for a single moment become agitated with each other. Paddling, I have learned, is like marriage. If you're not moving with the same rhythm, your paddles crash together. So, either our success on this trip was because nine months of marriage has taught me about patience and support, or it was just because our boat was long enough that we could essentially paddle independently.
By late afternoon we were getting very tired from the intense paddling, so we pulled into Anchorage Campsite, an alternate to the campsite we had originally booked. We dragged the kayak up the beach, got the tent set up, and cleaned off. Later we had a nice dinner, went for a walk along the beach, and crashed early.
The next morning we got up early and took a walk inland to find "Cleopatra's Pool," a freshwater river/pool in the interior of Abel Tasman. Two hours later we returned to the camp, loaded up our gear into the kayak, and paddled down the coast. This day the water was just like in the brochures, and we got to see a couple more of the little grey penguins. A few hours later we landed back at the main beach in Marahau, dropped the kayaks off, and took a quick shower at the kayak company's facilities before heading east along the coast. Our next stop: the home of one of our favorite white wines in the world, the Marlborough Valley.
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