Onwards and Outwards...

we just got back to Nelson after our 5 day adventure in the Abel tasman park. when we planned our trip 2 weeks ago and booked all the campsites we had decided we would take our time and sit on the beaches and only walk a few hours each day, but of course the only nice days were the first and the last ones. the two days in the middle it just poured with rain. we were pretty worried about our little ghetto tent, but it held out, no major leakages, but everything ended up damp, and smelly by the end. that aside the scenery was amazing, beautiful blue/green water nice sandy beaches, and tropical forest in between. at the place we stayed for the 3rd and fourth nights there was a really posh lodge with a restaurant/cafe about a half hour walk away, kind of like cathedral lakes, so we went and sat there out of the rain and drank really expensive coffee. all of the campsites where quite nice, most had cooking shelters so we didn't have to sit in the rain. one day when we were all huddling in the cooking shelter out of the rain, i got to talking to a lady there with her family and it turned out she was from calgary and had come to nz as a backpacker at 26 and never went home. i'm starting to see where all those stories come from, i could see living here. in all our planning of the trip, we didn't figure out how we were going to get back to marahau from the carpark at the end of the track, so we only went as far as the last water-taxi pick up point and took that back to the beginning, and missed out on the last campsite we had reserved. 5 days was more that enough though. on the water taxi on the way back we saw a penguin in the water which was pretty exciting, and sealions and pups sunning on the rocks. we met some people from christchurch on the water taxi who dropped us off in nelson on their way home, which was great, saved us $40 and having to figure out where and when to get the bus. i'm going to change the batteries on my camera so i can up load pictures now.