Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Abel Tasman

Up at 7:00, showered, breakfast, then waited for the van to pick us up (me and a Japanese girl, who's doing the same trip today). Picked us up at 8:20 and took us to Ocean River and we got suited up in wetsuits, lifejackets, booties, etc. There's six of us on the trip, me, two guides, and 3 Japanese girls.

The water taxi boat picked us up at the office and took us to the water, got launched and took a quick boat ride up to Anchorage. At Anchorage, we disembarked from the water taxi and pullled three double kayaks out of the storage shed and packed everything into them. I lucked out, I got paired with the one Japanese girl that actually knew how to paddle a kayak!

We kayaked from Anchorage to a great golden sand beach (all the beaches in Abel Tasman are amazing golden sand beaches) and had a tea/coffee/cookie break. Then kayaked out around Pinnacle Island and saw a few seals and cormorants/shags, then into a lagoon and up a river a short way to a swing bridge that trampers on the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk have to use to cross the river. Then back out and to Torrent Bay beach and had an amazingly good lunch tortilla's with fried beef and ALL fixings. It was sooo good, I couldn't believe I got such a great meal. I ate like a pig, because there was lots of food, and what wasn't eaten was going to be thrown away. My arms were killing me!

Then kayaked back to Anchorage and got the 3:30 water taxi back to Marahau, lounged in the hot tub at the office for a bit, then they drove us back to our hostels about 5:00.

Had a simple supper, as I was still quite full from that humongously grand lunch.

Me and the Austrian girl (Miriam) played some chess, she beat me in a game, then we decided to go to the nearest town, about 20 km away, and get a bottle of red wine. We were the only ones in the whole hostel, other than a few people using the campsites.

We drank wine, played cards and chess. We got to bed sometime aftermidnight.

I remarked to Miriam that I had said something about her in my journal, I had put in there she was "a good chess player for a girl!" She laughed and insisted I change it to just "a good chess player!"

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