We left Kaiokura early in the morning en route to Pickton/Abel Tasman Park. Shortly outside of town the diver parked the bus on the road and told us of a short hike we should take. Just as I thought his place couldn’t surprise me anymore I was again shocked with what we found after our 20 min hike. The trail head ended into a small pool with a waterfall about 150 feel high feeding it. Inside the pool were baby seals! Apparently the babies are taken up stream about a half mile from the coast every morning while the mother hunts for food during the day and they returns to feed the babies and bring them back to the ocean at night. How cool is that!
The initial plan was to skip Picton and continue on to Abel Tasman Park as Picton was just a coastal city with not much to do. However, after passing through we noticed a dive shop next door to the hostel...plans changed ;). We had some time to kill so we decided to take a “hilltop” hike...after about 2 hours of an uphill battle we decided that their definition of a “hill” is much different than ours! The view from the peak was stunning though; i'll put up some pictures, but they do not do justice to how it looks in reality!!!
As far as the dive, we showed up after the day trip charter had left so they offered us a night dive on the beach. What we later found out was their “beach” was about 1000 yards down a terraced cliff face which we had to descend (and ascend after the dive) while wearing full dive gear including a full 7mm wetsuit and 30 lbs of lead weight to counter said wetsuit!!!!! ugh. The dive went well. It was shallow site about 40 ft deep, but the water temp was a BRISK 51 degrees!!!! yes....51 degrees no typo. The visibility really limited what we were able to see, but there were many yellow and blue starfish and inside the small wreck we saw a 6 ft long eel swimming through!
Today we are on our way to Abel Tasman for some adventure! We're planning on flying an aerobatic airplane. if you don't hear from me that means i'm not meant to be a pilot ;)
