Able Tasman

That sure did live up to its hype! The Able Tasman is so beautiful, and best of all, we got great weather pretty much the whole time! The company we booked the kayaks through had another couple doing the exact same trip as us - a young couple from California (Julia and Richard), who are also doing a year of travelling. We spent most of the trip with them and had a blast.

We started off on Friday, January 29 in Motueka and drove to the launch site in Marahau. After a quick kayak lesson from a guide, we were ready to go. We started by taking a bit of a detour from Marahau to the split apple rock at Kaiteriteri beach. It is a huge rock in the water that looks like a split apple. It was pretty neat.

Split Apple rock

From there we made our way up the coast to our first stop for the night at Anchorage Beach. Most of the kayaking was pretty neat - nicely sheltered and calm, with seals and birds along the way. We stopped for lunch on a little beach that only had 2 other people on it. The sand was pretty and white and the water was clear and blue, so of course, Dave swam! After lunch we unfortunately had to tackle the "mad mile" of kayaking. This is one of the main areas of the kayak that isn't sheltered, so it is much more rough and choppy. IT WAS TERRIFYING! I thought I was going to die (of course I was over reacting, but I was scared!). The waves were big and coming from all different directions. If Dave wasn't in the kayak with me I think I would have had a panic attack. Thankfully we made it safe and sound to Anchorage Bay and I will never do much open, rough water kayaking again in my life!

We made it to Anchorage pretty early in the day so we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach with Julia and Richard. It was great because Dave had someone to play with and Julia and I just suntanned and chatted. We finished the day off with dinner and a camp fire with a few other people from the camp site. It was pretty neat to sit around with 10-15 different people and compare travel stories and find out neat places to go and see.

Day 2 started out nice and relaxing and while we were loading our kayak one of the coolest things of the trip happened. I was looking out into the water and saw this dark shadow skim across the bottom. It took me a minute to figure out what it was but there were 4-5 stingrays in the water just swimming around. It was so cool to see them in the wild just playing with each other and hiding in the sand on the bottom.

Can you see the stingrays?

Luck was on our side and high tide was around 10am so we left Anchorage at 9am to make our way up a river to this neat place our guide told us about called Cleopatra's pool. Everyone who was hiking the trail walks right by it, but you can only reach it by kayak at high tide. It is a pretty neat little rocky area in the river that has a natural, mother nature made water slide. We were able to tie up our kayaks and go for a little walk to the area and actually slide down this water slide. It was a little painful because not all of the rocks were totally smooth, but still really cool to try!

The waterslide

 

From Cleopatra's pool we made our way back onto the open water and up towards our kayak drop off point at Onetahuti Bay. We saw tons more seals and a few neat rock formations on our way there. We spent a couple of hours at Onetahuti and had some lunch and a swim. Once we dropped our kayaks off we had to do an hour hike to Awaroa to make it past a tidal crossing at low tide. We were making such good time that we decided to stop off at the Awaroa lodge for a nice cold beer. It was such a nice treat after kayaking and hiking to sit down with an icy beer and relax for half an hour. We successfully made our tidal crossing and made it to our campsite for that night at Waiherakeke Beach. The tidal crossing was pretty interesting though - most people walked around the bay to the smallest part and crossed there, but we were all getting pretty tired and didn't want to have to walk any more than necessary so we just walked straight across and got so much water and sand in our shoes! None of our shoes were dry by the next morning even with a fire!

We taught Richard and Julia how to play Euchre, had some dinner, another fire and then hit the hay because the sandflies and mozzies were terrible. They were so bad that I woke up in the middle of the night with a huge fat lower lip. I think I must have been bitten in my sleep in one or two spots because my lips were huge and I always swell up and react badly to these bites. It took almost 2 days for the swelling to go down and in the meantime I had Angelina Jolie lips!!

Our last day was supposed to be a nice relaxing hour long hike before our water taxi pick up at 3pm. unfortunately, when Richard and Julia woke up they realized they couldn't find their camera. They spent a couple of hours retracing their steps and going through their bags over and over, but no luck. Julia was pretty bummed for the rest of the day. The last part of the hike was good but we were happy to get it over with so we could just relax on the Totaranui beach and read. Our water taxi came to get us at 3pm and took us back to our cars. The water was pretty rough on the way back but otherwise
the trip was pretty cool. We got to see more stingray and seals and we even saw a few blue penguins swimming in the water - they are sooo fast!

Able Tasman was awesome and we were lucky enough to get more great weather. Except for some wind and bugs, it was great. After we got back to our cars and had some dinner and followed Richard and Julia back to a camp ground and had some drinks and snacks with them around another fire. They were such a nice couple, we hope we'll cross paths with them again in our travels because they are also going to the north island and then to Australia and SE Asia. So, we'll see...

Thanks for Reading

xoxoxo