Tuesday 10-19-10 Start of the Abel Tasman

Monday was spent uploading wedding pics in an internet cafe in Motueka, S   L   O   W  internet speeds, but it was raining out so what better way to spend it than sipping coffee, reading and getting our pics.  then drove to base camp, The Barn to prep for our tramp.

Tues - After a very cold night we woke up to blue sky!  We were expecting rain, for the start of our tramp.  We stayed at The Barn a hostle/campground that is two minutes away from the place we were to meet our water taxi.  At the Barn we saw our exact van! We met the couple who called it there home as well, they are from San Francisco; Jesse and Alice.  Jesse just finished his MBA and Alice was ready to change jobs.  They will be in NZ for three months.

We parked our van at the aqua taxi and set out to meet our skipper and guess who pulled up at the taxi… Jesse and Alice will be on the same trip.  The meeting place is not by water but on land a few minutes from the ocean.  They loaded our packs in the boat and then loaded us in the boat.  A tractor pulled the boat to the water and backed us in! A vert efficient way, but the skipper said the local police do not like them to use this method.  The town of Marahu is population 30 and they all work to cater to the tourists going into the park.

Our taxi to the start of the walk was more than we expected.  We went out of our way to see Split Apple Rock.  It is a spherical rock that sits on a bed of rocks above the water in the middle of a bay.  The rock is split in half.  It is a big deal because NZ used it in there international tourism campaign.  We headed north to our destination.  About 5 min past split apple rock the boat to a sharp turn and we knew the skipper spotted something. Off to the left only about 10-15 feet off the boat we saw dolphins! When we thought it could not get better we saw a baby dolphin! it was just about the cutest thing we have seen, it looked just like a dolphin but no bigger than a salmon.  The skipper said they have to stick right by their mom's side for the first few days/weeks because they babies do not know how to balance themselves well.   Of course like an idiot I put the camera in my pack and it was not accessible. Ugh! And right after we saw the dolphins we spotted little blue penguins! The blue penguins are the smallest in the world.  They are very shy so as we approached they ducked under water.  We liked our skipper, he called out the DOC for being "a bit slack" about how they talk to tourists and run things! All we could do with grin.

About an hour later we arrived at Totaranui the start of our tramp and it was amazing.  Golden beaches kissing green/blue clear ocean!  We headed on the trail to our first campground for the night Tonga bay.  We were blown away buy the views and of course the trail.  It was a great trail and well maintained, however still kiwi with 3 slips in about 10min of walking from the start.  We met a guy from Switzerland named Stephan, we hiked and chatted with him as we crossed our first low tide crossing that we would encounter on the trail.  It took us about 20 min to walk across the bay, it was not completely drained.  We crossed a river down the middle that was up to our knees and very cold.  

We arrived at our campground and were again blown away buy it's beauty.  About 20 min after we set the tent up the rain came.  It rained on us for about 3hours. We huddled in the tent thinking about having sandwiches for lunch instead of our warm noodle dinner to stay dry and warm.  About 8:30 we cooked our dinner in the tent, ramon and tea, YUM!