New Zealand Part three – Adventuring in Abel Tasman

I have decided that I am a First Class Adventurer – I love to explore, adventure, hike (insert activity here) but at the end of the day I like a hot shower and good food. Somehow I convinced Mark and Greg that for this trip we should ALL be first class adventurers… so let the adventure begin!

We started out for kayaking just outside of Nelson in the Abel Tasman National Park– we booked the trip through Abel Tasman Kayaks and we opted for the 2 day tour with Lodge stay (key word here is Lodge). We met our guide at 8:30 am and gathered all of our gear (jackets, spray skirts, life vests) and had a quick safety briefing – we headed down to Marahau beach and began our journey. There were 6 total in our group plus our guide Jake. Mark and I were in one kayak, Greg teamed up with Rachel (a dutch girl visiting NZ) and Eva and Mike were in another. We headed North up the coast passing many “Bach’s” which are only accessible by foot or water taxi – actually all of Abel Tasman is only accessible by foot or Water Taxi (that water taxi is quite a business). We made our first stop at Apple Tree bay for morning tea (I love it here!) .
We pushed off again and continued our voyage north – the weather was beautiful, sun shining and great seas, including an unusual “Sou-wester” which allowed us to raft together put up a sail harness the wind for a while on our way to Watering Cove where we stopped for Lunch. .

Jake (our guide) cooked up some green lipped mussels (Yummers!) and beef skewers which we enjoyed with Pita Bread and Salad. It was quite a feast on the beach. After lunch Jake let us loose and sent us off on a hike to Torrent Bay Lodge. (Don’t worry all of our luggage was taxi’d up to the lodge ahead of us!). We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking through the beautiful bush (the NZ jungle). Much of the walk was a trail through the jungle with a thick canopy of ferns, trees and vines. We decided to go the long route and head over to Cleopatra’s pool where the water from the river gushed over some boulders.
We made it to the lodge around 4:30 to find no one – we were amazed at this lodge in the middle of the National Park supplied only by boat – but somehow it had hot showers, beer!!, and a full professional Kitchen. Craig Wilson, the Chef and owner of the Lodge, prepared us an amazing dinner of Lamb, roast vegetables and salad. Craig actually cooked for Paul and Linda McCartney (this ones for my mom) and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. The lodge holds 24 and the night we stayed there were 10 total guests. After dinner we retired to the lounge for chatter, but headed to bed early.

A new guide, KP, met us the next morning and we took a Sea Taxi up to Onetahuti Bay (more north). We geared up and headed back out to sea, heading out to see the Seal Colony on Tonga Island. Again we had amazing weather (luck is on our side). We kept our distance from the seals – similar to the river otters, if you scare seals they won’t return to the island.

We continued down to Mosquito Bay where we had lunch – this was an amazing beach. We brought our kayaks up on a sand bar and by the time we were done with lunch we had to drag them back to the water because of the tide. . We were in the water about 4 hours by the time we returned to Torrent Bay. From here we took a water taxi back to Marahau Beach where we expected to get off the boat. Instead the driver drove the boat onto a boat ramp that was connected to a tractor. The tractor pulled us out of the water and then drove us back to Abel Tasman Kayaks headquarters in the boat.
We headed back to Nelson to spend the night in a great little house – the Sea View Holiday house (great find greg) where we had fish and chips and watched A History of Violence (I guess lugging our NetFlix all this way paid off). Next we are off to do underworld rafting…