Ahhhhhhh the Abel Tasman National Park. What a worthwhile journey that was. We had a chilled night in Nelson getting some absolutely nyummy Hot Chocolate Pudding which I was immensely pleased to enjoy as it was totally egg free and sooooo delicious & then off to bed for an early morning call to head off to the Abel Tasman to take a nice little boat trip up and then do a 12.4km walk back down from Anchorage Bay & what a walk that was. The views were just spectacular & the weather was perfect. A partly sunny day with some clouds for the sun to hide behind every now and again to keep the weather warm rather than hot but no rain at all. I was pretty exhausted by the time we had finished the walk but I was totally satisfied. With views like that who can ever be unhappy.
And so the journey continues down the West Coast towards Greymouth & Franz Joseph to have the opportunity to walk on a real live moving Glacier (not while we were on it but it does move a bit each day). Our gorgeously cute Kiwi driver, Dusty, who was a bundle of joy telling us funny stories, giggling at his own jokes and using the ever popular sweet as & is one of the 10% of Kiwi's who has no interest in Rugby (good for me as no ragging about us losing the tri-nations) picked us up and took us on a little journey to the one part of New Zealand that was just yuck. To make matters 'worse' I had left my nice waterproof jacket at the hostel. Arghhhhh. Silly silly me. Good thing Danielle was staying an extra night so that I could call & ask the hostel to give it to her so that I could get it from her in Wanaka. Luckily the journey was so much better than the destination where we got to see a road kind of carved into the mountainside at Hawks Crag & then stopped off at Cape Foulwind to see the New Zealand Fur Seals in abundance although true to the name the wind was certainly foul as seals are not the best smelling animals bless them (even though Cape Foulwind was so named by Captain Cook after the gales & rain that battered his ship Endeavour in March 1770 rather than the smell). We then went for a little walk down the Truman Track to look at more beautiful coastline before stopping at the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks & Blowholes aptly named for the layered rocks that look like a stack of pancakes before finishing off in Greymouth. This ugly tarmacced town was nothing more than a supermarket stop & a spot to have a nights sleep before moving on again. I guess it can't all be amazing and I had to have something that was less than perfect that I didn't fall in love with.
