One Final Adventure

Hi!

My last epic adventure in New Zealand was north to the Nelson/Abel Tasman area with Becca.  I don't have a lot of pictures, since my camera battery died, but I'll try to make up for it with informative descriptions.

We got into Nelson in the late afternoon and wandered all over town looking for the rental car place.  The i-site set us off in the wrong direction, so we got more up-to-date instructions from a posse of hippies painting flowers on their hostel.  A friendly bus driver got us close, and we walked up to the airport--from the wrong side.  When we eventually made it past all the hangars, we found our car rental and drove up the coast to Abel Tasman.  We got a tent site at Old MacDonald's farm alongside quail, hedgehogs, llamas, alpacas, and ducks.

The next morning we drove back down to the Motueka airfields and went hang-gliding!  It was quite the adventure.  The views were phenomenal, and I felt lighter than air.  I even got to control the hang-glider for a bit.  It was so much fun.

After hang gliding, we adventured down to Kaiterteri to sea kayak.  We explored the islands, inlets, and caves of the coast, weaving among the rocks.  The beaches were a reddish sandstone, and the water was a striking teal.  We saw lots of wildlife, too, including gannets, shags, teals, fur seals, starfish, and jellyfish.  The goal of our outing, however, was split apple rock.  We were moving so fast we almost overshot it!  Then we saw a strange-looking rock over by the shore, and we decided to check it out, just in case.  It wasn't super big, but it was very impressive up close.  Not exactly apple-shaped, but close enough! :)

The wind and rain came as we drew back to shore, so we dried off and packed up as quickly as we could before heading back to Nelson, where we stayed at the Paradiso hostel.  It was pretty cool: it was made from an old house, so it had lots of character, and it had little reading nooks, hammocks, a pool, and an old van that had been converted into a TV room/book exchange.  They also gave you lots of food, which is always a plus!

The next morning we headed back to Christchurch in a flurry, since I had to leave the following day.  It was hard to believe that in only a couple of days I'd go from an epic adventure in a distant land to sitting at home blogging about it!