Two Years in KiwiLand: Christmas Break (Day 4)

Dan and I woke up at the crack of dawn today and luckily to another beautiful day. The water was completely calm which was much different from the previous afternoon. We cooked up some scrambled eggs on the grill then headed over to the kayak place to get started.

As there was no instruction necessary today, we were able to get right out on the water. I sat in the back of the kayak so I had the responsibility of steering us with the foot pedals for the rudder. The plan for the day was to kayak from Marahau to Bark Bay where we would spend the night at a DOC campground. The DOC is the New Zealand Department of Conservation. They run the national parks and have a bunch of campgrounds throughout the country. See the map below to get an idea of where we headed. For a larger image, click here.

The day was pretty hot and very sunny. The water was a beautiful deep blue. There were all sorts of beaches along the way - some only accessible by kayak while others were part of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track which is a multi-day hike that I will probably come back and do sometime. We stopped off to rest and relax at several beaches along the way. I can't remember exactly which ones they were, but I think it was at Stillwell Bay and an unnamed one near Boundary Bay. These beaches were deserted and beautiful. We brought a few beers along with us so had a beer and relaxed on the sand for a while. At the one beach, these old ladies came down from a house somewhere hidden up on the hill and proceeded to start sunbathing topless - not the prettiest of sites so that was when it was time to hit the water again.

For the most part, the seas were calm, however, when we got to the area known as the "Mad Mile" which stretches the length of Te Pukatea Bay where the land juts out until Anchorage, it got a bit rough. The wind picked up immediately and created some fairly large white-capped swells that we had to fight through. It was pretty tiring and a bit unnerving but we were able to get through.

We carried on to Pinnacle Island where there are colonies of Southern Fur Seals. It was cool to see them, but they smelled terrible. It is seal pup season so we were only allowed to get 20 meters away from them but still pretty cool to see. Then we fought on to Bark Bay where we would camp for the evening. For some reason, it was quite a struggle to get to the beach on Bark Bay - I think the tides and winds kept pushing us out so it was a bit demoralizing until we finally arrived. This place had another really nice beach area and the campsites were within 15 feet of the beach. It is one of the more popular camp sites so it got pretty full. Dan and I were there relatively early (4:00 PM) so we got a good site, but for some reason, people immediately started setting up camp right next to us - a bit annoying but not much we could do about it.

We explored the area for a while - there were starfish everywhere in the tide pools. We also took a hike along part of the Coastal Track to see some waterfalls which turned out not to be overly impressive, but it was still a nice hike.

While we were off exploring, the wind really picked up again. It got so windy that it actually snapped one of the fiberglass tent poles so our tent was leaning over lopsided when we returned. With a little ingenuity, we were able to rig the much shorter rain fly pole to the broken pole and brace it together with nylon straps to the good pole to keep it upright for the night. Fortunately, the wind died down later that evening - not sure what we would have done if it didn't hold as we were miles away from any roads, let alone camping stores.

We cooked up a great dinner of ramen noodles, tuna fish, and granola bars then hit the sack after an exhausting but fun day.