Kayaking Part II - Abel Tasman National Park

K: Our second kayak adventure was a 3-day kayak/camping trip through Abel Tasman National Park. This national park is at the top end of the South Island. It is a stunning coastline, with beautiful bays, limestone and marble hills with lush vegetation.

The whole kayaking experience in New Zealand is quite a show, really a well-oiled machine. Kayaks are loaded onto a water taxi, passengers loaded into the water taxi, and then the water taxi loaded is onto a trailer which is pulled by a tractor. This entire caravan is then transported to the beach where the tractor makes it way out to the ocean and launches the water taxi. Off we went to the far northern end of the park via the water taxi so that we could paddle our way back to the launch point. The water taxis also carry trampers and day trippers to different parts of the park, transport backpacks so that trampers don't have to lug them, and even deliver mail, and drop off the daily newspaper. Oh, and there is a floating backpacker hostel that moves from bay to bay. It is truly quite an operation.

This trip was a little more posh than the previous kayak trip -- french press coffee in the morning, breaks for tea and biscuits, table cloths and a large awning to cover our picnic area. I asked Viggo how come our North American camping trip didn't have all of these amenities!!

The scenery was stunning and we got to paddle with many seals, including several babies who surprisingly make a lot of noise! We also saw a lot of birds, little blue penguins and sting rays.

























V: I asked our guide Hayo, "How do you group the clients, after they register for a kayak-camping trip?"
"It's all random," he said.
"Wow, we got lucky," I said.

We certainly got grouped with some fun people. Eight of us, with guide Hayo, paddled out from Awaroa Beach south to Marahau Beach, the Kayak Abel Tasman base. Karen and Viggo in one tandem kayak; veteran kayakers Lloyd and Linda, from Perth, Australia, in one; Rochelle and Rudolph, who moved from South Africa to Bundaberg, Australia, a few years ago, in another; and Donald and Alex, from Wellington, NZ, in the final kayak.

It's often a little tough to break the ice, isn't it, in such random grouping situations, but we all got to be pretty good friends after two and a half days paddling, camping, eating, drinking, and talking together.

Each of our paddling companions proved to be quite interesting people, as Alex revealed that he and Donald had won a bronze medal in Latin dancing at, I believe, the New Zealand Gay Games, last year, and are training for the next year's competition.

Linda is quite the multi-sport athlete, and Lloyd, a geologist, has three types of kayaks, I believe, sitting in his backyard.

And the world is just a small place, really, as we hope to see Rochelle and Rudolph in Philly in a couple of months, when they do a little tour of the US and visit their daughter in NYC. Rudolph is a physician in Australia and Rochelle hosts a radio program in Australia that features Afrikaans music and musicians. How interesting each of our paddling pairs proved to be!

We'll have a few more photos from this trip posted in a later blogpost, as we are all swapping photos soon.

What a great paddling trip this was--tasty camp cuisine, some nice wine at night, and mostly excellent paddling conditions. Best of all, we made some good friends!