Marlborough Region & Abel Tasman National Park

Marlborough Region

Finally I've arrived at the south island - it's been hard work so far but hopefully it's been worth it. The south island is prized as the top attraction in New Zealand and most people recommend a ratio of 3:1 in terms of time spent on the two islands which is pretty much what I'm doing. Highlights include the stunning Abel Tasman National Park, the amazing Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, skiing and snowboarding at Queenstown and Wanaka, the beautiful Milford and Doubtful Sounds and whale watching and swimming with dolphins at Kaikoura. So, lots to be done, and I'll see if I can squeeze that skydive in somewhere too.

The ferry journey was pleasant enough, 3 hours in total, and I arrived in Picton to be greeted with a bit of sunshine whuch I barely recognised at all. I wanted to make good use of it - it would probably disappear again soon - so I drove straight to Blenheim for a very swift wine tasting session (the Marlborough Region is another big wine producing area) and then set off for Nelson to make base for a few days.

Nelson is a nice little city (town by UK standards), very quaint with an attractive bay and a compact city centre. After a look around that centre and a bite to eat it was getting on a bit and I was shattered from the early start and long drive (and the wine earlier) so I settled down at a campsite and got to work on some of my long-overdue diary entries.

Despite it raining all night I woke up to beautiful sunshine, so no time to waste...my next target was Nelson Lakes, which surprisingly turned out to be 90km south of Nelson and going away from my next point, Abel Tasman National Park. Nevermind, I did the drive anyway and the whole way there I watched as ominous looking clouds loomed ahead of me - bad choice of destination. Ho hum, well at least I got a few nice rainbow pictures out of the journey! Apparently the lakes usually have pretty poor weather due to the surrounding mountains so maybe it wasn't such a bad move after all.

It was all very time consuming - the drive took ages around windy mountain roads - and after a look the WOW Collectable Cars Museum I decided to stay in Nelson for one more night before heading off to Abel Tasman the next morning.

Abel Tasman National Park

Not a huge amount of luck weather wise on this trip so far but I picked a cracking time to visit this protected reserve. I had two days in total and each day had sunshine and a cool temperature, a bit cloudy on day two but I wasn't about to complain. The park was founded in 1942 - it was previously just a remote village with a few houses scattered here and there - and is now a hugely popular place for walkers and kayakers. Despite being 22,350 hectares (that sounds a lot to me) it's the smallest of New Zealand's national parks.

I arrived at Marahau, where I'd decided to make base, at 11am and after some brief deliberation about what to do I decided to walk up to Anchorage (almost 5 hours) and get a water taxi back, and then get a water taxi to Tonga Bay in the morning and followed by a walk down to Anchorage, with yet another water taxi back down again - that way I could cover the whole of the southern track in two days as well as the seal colony on Tonga Island (apparently the water taxi would stop there on the way to Tonga Bay).

In total I did about 9 hours walking over the two days at quite a pace, which is a lot for someone who doesn't like walking. The paths were fairly easy but the bits that caught me out where the little tracks down to the beaches - the walk (more like climb) back up absolutely killed me, particularly just above the knees, and on both days I was pushed for time so I had to really get my skates on. I never thought I'd end up sweating on the south island of New Zealand in winter but I sure did.

Anyone who's seen my pictures on Facebook will have a good idea of what the park is all about - peace, tranquility and scenery. And lots of it. There's hardly anyone about, although apparently it's pretty busy in the summer; the biggest camp on the Tonga to Anchorage track was occupied by just two ducks. It was all very surreal and I found the 9 hours spent walking just flew by (with the exception of the steep uphill bits). If you want to take a break from it all and lose yourself for a while then you could do worse than this place. A lot worse.

Well, I was absolutely knackered after that, my back hurt from carrying a rucksack about, my knees ached and my left hamstring was sore and tight. Time to stay off the tracks for a few days I think.

Before I end this entry, here's a strange phenomena for you - the naming of places. In Australia you find small towns and creeks that have Aboriginal names, yet most of the places have European ones. On top of that a high percentage of towns, bays, points, lakes and mountains are commonly named after the same people - for example, Lachlan Macquarie, a governor of New South Wales in the 19th century, has over 3,000 things named after him in Australia, many of which he never visited or even knew anything about. And New Zealand has its own strange way of doing things - mostly Maori names but European ones for the major cities (e.g. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch). And get this - the forgotten man of old world discovery, Abel Tasman (he got to Australia and New Zealand long before Captain Cook), never actually set foot on the reserve which now holds his name. And neither did Cook - that honour went to Dumont d'Urville in 1827 who carefully mapped out the whole area. And yet they named it Abel Tasman National Park - go figure.

More strange naming conventions to come, there's some corkers lying around New Zealand.