Yesterday involved a long hike, a cold catamaran ride and a grease fire. It was tiring to say the least. We'll start out our arrival to Marahau. It's a little town that consists of a couple of beach camps on the outskirts of Abel Tasman National Park. We're staying at the Abel Tasman Centre which is one of the beach camps. Our place is a little cabin which sleeps 5 and has a little kitchenette. It's really not too bad and is all we need.
This is our little cabin and home for 2 days. It's not exciting but it gets the job done. And it's cheap.
This is the inside, complete with a table, chairs, 3 twin beds, a double bed, and a kitchenette
You could see our kitchen but Erin is blocking my view
This is the "beach" in front of our place. The tides in New Zealand are insane. At high tide this entire sand area is covered with a couple feet of water and it comes up halfway those rocks.
This is the start of the hike. We were going to Anchorage which is 11.8 km which is a little over 7 miles. It's along ways.
Here's a map of some of the trails. We ended at the Anchorage
So here's how the trail started, walking through a nice flat area just off the ocean. Chase is also taking some pictures there.
After a short climb on the first part of the trail, we saw this view of the beach. This was the first of many good views
Chase just trying to annoy Erin with the peace sign. It works everytime.
Getting a little higher up, we found another good view so I figured this would be my token proof that I was here.
This was a cool little waterfall.
This was another little waterfall. I liked all of the moss covering the rocks.
And those are some of the cool palm tree-like things they have all over New Zealand.
Higher up, we found this tree that had been knocked over and was blocking the path. Cindy used her midget strength to throw each of us over the tree, one by one. At least that was the plan. It changed at the last minute and we had to just climb over.
Another good view. I liked how the jungle butted right up against the beach, which you can see at the bottom.
I couldn't get this to come out the way I wanted but I was trying to show the river/waterfall to the left and beach/ocean to the right.
Getting higher and looking back toward the beach that we saw before.
Once we reached what was basically the top of the mountain, we turned a corner to go to the other side of the mountain and the terrain immediately changed from dense jungle to almost desert.
More of the really dry area
Even though it was dry way up here, we could still see the area we'd end up in. Ignore the ugly glasses, they only cost $20.
Pretty flowers right? Well these were down by the beach and we quickly learned that where there are flowers there are bees. There were big bees, medium bees, small bees, mama bees, daddy bees, and baby bees. None of them would leave us alone on the beach. We'd try to sit down and within a few minutes we'd have a bee bothering us. Annoying.
This is the Anchorage beach. It had some beautiful water. This is where we would hang out for an hour before getting on a catamaran.
Our catamaran took us up close to this rocky island to look at seals. You can't see much there.
My camera didn't get a great picture, but if you look closely at the rocks you can see some little seals.
Someone somehow had a small piece of private land in the national park for their house. Sounds sketchy but it was a nice little piece of land.
This was about the time the guy put up the sail for the catamaran. These people were just trying to not get hit by the big pole. It was pretty funny.
Oh, did I mention that the ride was FREEZING? It got cloudy on us which dropped the temp and then the wind didn't help anything. It still didn't stop Chase's peace sign.
We stopped by this, which is called Split Apple Rock. I don't know anything about it but it looks like a split apple and people swim around it.
And then, just as our trip was about to end look who showed up...
Our old friend Beyonce! But where was Jay-Z you ask?
Oh he was keeping a lookout from his own boat. No big deal.
Now back to reality. We finished up our boat ride and came back to grill some steaks and chicken. Since we're the official grillers around here, Chase and I decided to fire up the grill. It was a little gas-powered grill that seemed simple enough. At least we thought so. After it started to heat up, we noticed flames shooting out the back and up the side of the building it was next to. This was before we could even put meat on it. We pulled it away and turned off the gas but the fire kept going. The entire grease catching area was on fire because nobody had bothered to clean it for who knows how long. As Chase and I tried to figure out what we should do about it, and the people downwind started getting out of their tents and campers because they were being smoked out, we started to hear plastic popping. At that point we decided a fire extinguisher might be the best option before we destroyed their grill. With a few puffs of powder, Chase put the fire out. Needless to say, we didn't use the grill for our grilling. We used a griddle and it was just fine.
The last excitement of the day came when Erin trapped a bee with a bottle cap against the window but then didn't know what to do with it. This is her freaking out. After terrorizing her for a few minutes, Chase came to the rescue and killed it.
It's now Monday morning here and we're deciding whether or not it's warm enough to go to the beach today. If not, we can always go back to Nelson since we're staying there tonight anyways. We fly back to Auckland tomorrow morning and meet up with Seth, Cori, and the girls. Then back home Thursday morning!
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