A Warm Sunny Day Kayaking in New Zealand

Thursday, June 04, 2009
Abel Tasman National Park, NZ., New Zealand
After recouping a bit at a nice hotel, we booked a kayak reservation to tour around a Abel Tasman National Park. The day started out very cold, but we arrived in the National Park with Sunny Skies. It was beautiful. Being in the off season, we only had two other kayakers with us on our trip. Raymond and his girlfriend from Tasmania were tour guides at home, but visiting New Zealand. They were friendly and great outdoorsy people. Much better kayakers than us, but we kept up with them and seemed to navigate our kayak through the same narrow sections that they did. We convinced our guide to let us detour from the standard course a bit and venture around a nearby island that had seals. It was beautiful. Humbled, I continue to see such amazing sites down here and feel so lucky to have the chance to experience this. It is almost too spectacular and looking at pictures afterwards just makes me realize how lucky I am. What a beautiful place this is!!!

We navigated around the nearby island and found some young New Zealand fur seals . The young ones are curious and hop into the water to swim around our kayaks. They swim underneath our kayak from side to side, surfacing to take a look at us from on top of the water, before submerging again to do a few tricks underwater. They are so fun to watch. I drop my arm underwater and try to catch them swimming under us, but they are too quick. I catch a good shot of them on top of water, but the Seal eventually gets bored with us and swims away.

We continue on our half day back to the starting point. Abel Tasman is very pretty. We are a little frustrated that it costs so much just to hike in the park. Not sure if we are being targetted as tourists, but the visitor center informs us that we must get a boat to drop us off in the park and then we can either hike back or hike a specific section. The bottom line is that it will cost us $80 US dollars to do a hike. Ouch, we decide to do the 1/2 day kayak and move on to our next destination. 

Unsure of our current plan, Kristin and I want to make it 850 kilometers to Milford Sound. Although New Zealand is beautiful, we are thinking of possibly looking into a flight to Fiji or Tahiti to get a few days of sun after that. Kristin returns on the 17th and like all my trips, we are packing it in!

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