Beautiful New Zealand

Dolphins!

We’ve been drinking in the beautiful sights our last week on the South Island.  While waiting for the ferry on Friday, we were greeted at the Picton terminal with two very welcome things, a school group doing hakas and traditional Maori songs and some dolphins.  The school group was great and I had vowed to see dolphins this time in New Zealand, so I was excited to accomplish that goal!  We returned from Wellington on Saturday after watching USA give 29 valiant minutes.  We won’t discuss the other 51 minutes where the USA went down in a ball of flames… But the game was good fun.  If you didn’t know that New Zealand and Australia were rivals in sport, you would have known at the game.  There were thousands of USA fans.  Mike and I began calling them Kiwi-Americans.  They rooted for us because they hate Australia!  We needed all the help the Kiwis gave.  Although it was difficult to discern who was American and who was a Kiwi.

Go USA!

Saturday, when we arrived back to our little New Zealand house, Vic asked us up for drinks.  As the All Blacks were playing that night we thought we’d go up about 4pm have a drink then return to our cottage for dinner and the game.  But, gracious hosts that they are, Yvonne had already put in extra “tea” (tea means dinner in NZ) for us and invited us to stay, eat and watch the game.  It was a wonderful night full of fun conversation again.  I’m still pinching myself as to how lucky we were to find such lovely hosts and a wonderfully beautiful place to stay while we are here.  The All Blacks had a decisive win over France and put them squarely into the Quarter Finals.

Sunday, we went out for a run on hilly Moetapu Bay Road then skyped with my Mom & Dad for a bit.  It was nice to see them and catch up a bit.  Then we decided to go for a drive further out into the sounds.  It was a beautiful day that quickly turned cold & dreary.  We actually got caught in quick hail storm that was so strong that we couldn’t see on the road for a few minutes!

Beach further up in the sound.

The next morning we slowly got around (we’ve had a daylight savings time change on Saturday night/Sunday morning) and decided to pack up and head over to the Abel Tasman National Park for an overnight hike.  We arrived in to Motueka and checked in with the i-Site to make some plans.  They gave us some great recommendations and we booked our campsite in the park and our water taxi ride back to the car.  We were ambitious and planned to do approximately 36 km of the 54 km trail through the park.  Monday we dropped the car at the water taxi lot and headed out on the trail.  It was a very nice 3 hour hike into our campsite on a little isolated beach, but we were starving by the time we arrived and the sun sadly was already behind the hill and we were getting cold fast.  No fires in the Abel Tasman park so, we got around to get the stove started and make some hot food & drinks fast.  Unfortunately our stove was broke!!  We were tired, cold and hungry eating cold chicken and crackers for dinner.  By 7:30pm we were in our tent shivering and huddling together to get warm.  It was a long night in the tent and possibly one of our coldest tented nights ever.  

Headed out.

The beach we camped at.

Sunrise.

The next morning, there were no eggs with no stove… so we both had a granola bar and headed out on the trail so we could warm up.  We had a big climb out from the beach we were at, so we were sweating and warm in about 20 minutes.  We had a set time to be picked up by the water taxi, so we could not waste any time.  They informed us, that if we were not on the beach we would be stranded!  Though, I highly doubt that would have been the case (not very Kiwi-like), but it probably helps them to keep on their schedule.  The hike on Tuesday was definitely tough, but so beautiful.  It was worth every step uphill that we took, just breathtaking.   

First people across the beach on our hike out of the bay we camped at.

Awesome 40m suspension bridge.

When we got to where the taxi was to pick us up we were about 45 minutes early and there was a lodge/café there.  It was quite an expensive and posh place, so we settled on just a snack and two beers, so that we didn’t go broke.  We thoroughly enjoyed it and then headed down to the beach to lie in the sun and wait for the taxi.  The taxi ride was great.  It was great to see everything from the water side that we had hiked and a bit more that we didn’t hike.  We even stopped at one of the islands to pick up 2 scientists.  At the end of the trip the taxi boat drove right up onto a trailer that was being pulled by a tractor and drove us right back down the road still in the boat to our cars.  

Mike resting while waiting for the taxi.

Aqua Taxi ride back to the car.

We were thinking about going to the USA game in Nelson that would have been on our way back, but we were pretty tired after such an arduous two days, so we picked up some groceries and headed back.  We planned on watching the game on TV last night, but unfortunately it didn’t play.  So we had dinner, watched Amazing Race Australia and  Step Up 2 then went to bed early for some body repair.  Unfortunately Mike turned his ankle while hiking so this morning we are icing his ankle before we head into Blenheim to use the internet and I can upload these last two posts.  Oh, how I miss internet in the USA.  WiFi is free and so easy to find….  I will value it when we arrive back home next week.

Boots cooling off on the beach.