Better late than never...

Several weekends ago the Arcadia group [the exchange university I came here with] met our Kiwi leader Alex, Friday morning [Friday March 16] downtown to catch the ferry across Cook Strait to Picton on the south island.  We got on a bus to Nelson to pick up Jane, our other Arcadia leader.  Jane and Alex are both really great and I love when we get to see them.  Late afternoon we arrive at our hostel just outside of Abel Tasmen National park.  We walked the beach nearby and met for a delicious dinner made by Jane and Alex.

Abel Tasmen was the second nat'l park in New Zealand and is on the north-west tip of the south island.  It's not very large but is on the cost, with miles of beautiful beaches, rocky islands home to animal preservation projects and families of lazy seals.  Saturday morning we woke early to ride a water-taxi up the coast into the park.  We were dropped about 15km from our destination that night and spent saturday hiking back along beaches, through small clusters of old houses, and along ridge trails overlooking white sand beaches and rich aqua water.  Lunch at Bark bay and then onto Cleopatra's pool complete with a natural slide and dunking pool, albeit dangerously cold mountain water.

We finally got to our home for the night, floating in Torrent Bay.  We all climbed to the top of the two story oceanic hostel and jumped off into the bay.  Dinner was a lamb and sausage bbq and after we played Jane's version of Kiwi charades.  The star gazing was unbelievable from the roof and we saw several shooters in under a half hour.  We all slept in the very bottom, it's a converted catamaran and we were very packed in but it was one of the best nights of sleep I've had in a very long time.

Sunday we got up very early to a cloudy and drizzles, motored to the shore and donned life jackets and skirts for our tandem sea kayaks.  We had two great kiwi guides and spent the day paddling back the rest of the way to our original hostel.  We met our bus and dropped Jane off in Nelson in time to catch our evening ferry back into Wellington.  It was an awesome weekend with great company and stunning scenery.