Abel Tasman: what a beauty!

Hello from sunny and WARM Takaka!!

I write to you today from a cafe in little artsy/hippie town west of Abel Tasman park. Stu is off in search of potters and pottery while I am doing all our communicating with the outside world and enjoying a lovely cup of coffee.


We have spent the last 5 days in Abel Tasman park doing quite a bit of hiking. For those who care/know the track we started at Totaranui and went towards the inland track up Gibbs Hill (which felt like a mountain) and then curved around to follow the inland track all the way back to Marahua. The terrain was surprisingly hilly for a costal track (especially at the northern end) but BEAUTIFUL. The views were incredible and every day we passed 2 or 3 beautiful bays with incredible views of the ocean, the sky, and the marine wildlife. This was Stu's first big backpacking trip (4 nights is quite a big leap from car camping) but he did amazingly well and even came to enjoy himself towards the end of it. ;-) Each night on either end of the park we slept at a beautiful valley campsite called Old MacDonald's farm, just 1km from the park's entrance where we had lots of space and showers and flushing toilets.

I could write for hours about all the amazing things we saw and did (we saw a pod of dolphins jumping out of the water off the coast of our campsite; we saw a little penguin swimming about in a bay; we saw a seal colonies; we saw incredible tidal changes and even walked across whole bays and inlets which were covered by water just minutes before we walked on the bare sand; we saw beautiful sunsets every night from the campsites.....) and in fact I have written it all in my own personal journal but unfortunately I don't have very much time left on the internet!

After Stu finishes up his pottery tour we are on the road again for a little campsite called Cobb River and then...who knows! The plan is always changing but we hope to spend lots of time camping and swimming and hiking and a little bit of time driving around to new places, cities, campsites. Only 4 weeks left until the Curme family arrives in Queenstown!!

We'll post again when we can. Don't worry we are happy and safe and living it up! Take care everyone! To all our friends in the US: watch out for that snow!