The previous night we'd hurried from Picton to Marahau, which is at the base of Abel Tasman National Park. A quick overnight at a campsite is necessary when there's no daylight to find a freedom camping spot. Like many of our stops, we'd planned to show up early to one of the adventure shops and figure out what we'd do that day. Kayaking was the plan. The companies try to get you for as much as they can, obviously, but we didn't want to have a quick little trip with slow strangers and a guide that would cost $175. We were just about to walk out the door to go check with another company when they asked us how comfortable we were in water. Perking up, we all said fine. I fibbed slightly. I can swim, and I've been kayaking before, but I'm not exactly graceful. If we were willing to attend a short tutorial on tides, wind, and kayaking skills, we could have a self-guided kayak tour. Perfect.
We had a map showing us which islands had a place to stop, a toilet, or a campground. The wind was fierce that day. We were free to tool around for up to six hours before we had to get the kayaks back to the launch. We managed five. Every day we'd been working out to an extreme degree and it was starting to take its toll. We got to see some fur seal pups playing in the water out by an island, but the wind was so high that white caps kept us pretty close to shore. We made a couple of stops and basked in the panoramic view of mountains.
Jesse loves to collect seashells. Which reminds me: flash forward to the Australian customs a month later:
Customs officer: Do you have any animal or plant products? Seeds? Nuts? Seashells or pine cones?
Jesse: NOPE DEFINITELY NO PINE CONES NO WAY.
So sea kayaking in Abel Tasman was amazingly beautiful but oh so exhausting. The pain of the final hour, fighting white caps and big swells trying to approach shore, realizing we'd overshot where we were going because of tidal changes in the shoreline, is still vivid. Not to mention I'd recently watched this terrifying little gem. Overall:
We gave the kayaks back and kept moving. Just up the road we got our first glimpse of Golden Bay and then the quaint tiny town of Takaka. It was a spectacular drive on the way.
We pulled into the campsite and did our normal song-and-dance that we only had two people in the van. Some campsites charge per vehicle and some per person. We were often offended by the high charges that some of the smaller towns demanded since there were few games in town. This was the first time we got caught and had to fork over the extra money for a third person. C'est la vie. We were completely beat and just wanted to fix dinner, have a drink, and crash out. We did just that, but not before counting some shooting stars.
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