Abel Tasman in a sentence: Complete and total perfect beach overload. The place is a super tourist-y destination but I can see why and it was totally worth all the people. As far as backpacking goes, this was maybe the most civilized camping excursion I've ever been on including flush toilets, a maximum of maybe 3.5 hours of hiking per day and endless perfect beaches only broken by short forays into amazing woods and over some hills that gave you perfect views of the perfect beaches. That's 4 times if you were wondering how many perfects I fit into that paragraph (5). However, that said, we managed somehow to turn this luxurious jaunt in nature into a study on blood loss and near starvation. If there were any insect borne disesases in NZ Margarett would have them all and be dead. twice. Our ridiculous natural hippy "insect repellent" worked fabulously for me but Margarett looks like a leper from the knee down. We did manage to build a camp fire all on our own that lasted all night and we saw a tiny morpork owl that chastised us for being up late at night. We left from Bark Bay and took the boat back up to Totoranui where the car was parked. On the way they showed us a little island where fur seals have their pups and they were completely unafraid of the boat and swam right up next to it and showed off for us. Apparently they cool down by sticking their flippers up out of the water and waving them around. Like elephant ears. The pups make noises like a seal throwing up.
Afterwards we went back to Nelson and I had the best shower of my life. We went out for beers later and met Drew, a Texan who just finished mechanic school in NZ and his mechanic friend Chris from Australia. Apparently we're only able to meet mechanics here. And not hot ones. Or ones with teeth. We went back to Picton to retrieve Rupert finally, but we had a day before we had to return the rental car so we went to the Flying Haggis for some beers. Margarett wanted to just sit in a nice pub that afternoon and finish her book but it wasn't meant to be. We walked in to the pub only to be almost blasted back out onto the street again by the sound of a small Jewish-looking guy belting out Love Shack on karaoke. This was just tthe beginning of maybe our weirdest 24 hrs in NZ so far. We had walked in to the middle of a cruise ship group doing karaoke which was soon joined by a bachelor party all wearing these ridiculous fake tattoo arm bands and proceeding to get ridiculously drunk.
Anyway, I am really tired of typing and the weirdest parts of the night happened later to Margarett involving James Carter's younger clone and a spider in some salad and some really really nice and adorably polite swiss boys. Now we're going to go watch people eat really weird food in Hokitika.
Afterwards we went back to Nelson and I had the best shower of my life. We went out for beers later and met Drew, a Texan who just finished mechanic school in NZ and his mechanic friend Chris from Australia. Apparently we're only able to meet mechanics here. And not hot ones. Or ones with teeth. We went back to Picton to retrieve Rupert finally, but we had a day before we had to return the rental car so we went to the Flying Haggis for some beers. Margarett wanted to just sit in a nice pub that afternoon and finish her book but it wasn't meant to be. We walked in to the pub only to be almost blasted back out onto the street again by the sound of a small Jewish-looking guy belting out Love Shack on karaoke. This was just tthe beginning of maybe our weirdest 24 hrs in NZ so far. We had walked in to the middle of a cruise ship group doing karaoke which was soon joined by a bachelor party all wearing these ridiculous fake tattoo arm bands and proceeding to get ridiculously drunk.
Anyway, I am really tired of typing and the weirdest parts of the night happened later to Margarett involving James Carter's younger clone and a spider in some salad and some really really nice and adorably polite swiss boys. Now we're going to go watch people eat really weird food in Hokitika.
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