Had a nice slow morning, the sun was shining so we decided to stay one more night at The Barn, we had breakfast and everyone took their time getting ready for the day. We started a hike into the park to discover some of the many beautiful bays Abel Tasman has to offer. It was fun taking our friends into the park, the landscape and vegetation is very different from Fiordland national park and the Keppler track. It does not get old being back to Able Tasman for a 3rd time, who does not love a beautiful beach with crystal clear water?! We walked for about an hour through the rain forest to Apple Bay, there were some lady's sun tanning right off the trail and a few others scattered around so we made our way to the far end so the guys could toss around the rugby ball and Kasey and I could get some much needed tanning time in.
The rugby game did not last to long as the sea breeze was in full effect and soon the guys were sunbathing, snoozing, and reading with us gals. For a few relaxing moments it seemed like we had the beach to ourselves, that is until we looked out to see a whole herd of Kayakers paddling our way. Soon our tranquil beach was swarmed by a group of young kids from all over the world, they did group activities like sprint races and human pyramids and they did all of this right in front of us when there was a whole beach for them to frolic on.
We decided it was time to relocate to a smaller bay that was on the way back to our camp. I think Ben and Justin liked the new bay better, as we dropped out of the forest onto the beach there were two women sunbathing topless right off the trail for everyone to see. The guys talked about some possible passes they could throw the lady's way so Ben and Justin could impress them, however I told them European woman are not impressed with American football. We all just lounged some more and once evening started to come on and the sand fly's came out we headed back into camp to cook some dinner.
Once at camp we realized we did not have dinner for the night planned, and The Barn was a good 30min one way from Motueka the closest town. So we went to a cafe for a round of beers and cheap appetizers, Kasey and I were very tempted to order dinner, but we decided to save some money and scrape together what we could find in the van. The waitress told us quietly that the Fat Tui (a cart along side the road) has the best burger she has ever eaten and at reasonable prices. She was a goofy blonde from Punakaiki that giggled too hard at our mispronunciations of towns, forgot which beers were which and spilled wine on another party, she was very sweet but backed up the blond stereotype. We ran over to see what the burger menu looked like, but to our disappointment the cart was closed. There were a few other people that had heard the same thing, so we waited in the parking lot for a few minutes to see if someone would appear, but I guess they'd gone fish'n. So instead we cooked up some raman noodles with cheese and crackers, and started talking to a couple from Vale, CO about their travels.
The couple was just married and are on a 3 month round the world honeymoon, and when they get back they are opening a restaurant in Seattle area called the Wurst Place that will specialize in gourmet brats. They were very nice and it was fun chatting with some fellow Americans and talking about the crappy internet and hearing of their troubles in Europe because of all the strikes, they could not even go to some of the places they wanted to. This couple also gave us the low down on a small hostel in Renwick that has tent spots and rents bikes for wine tasting, they could not say enough good things about the place and we all decided we would check it out since wine tasting was next on the list of things to do. After dinner it was more cribbage then to bed exhausted from a rough day on the beach.
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