"Two Men in a Smaller Boat"

Before I set out for this trip I canversed opinion on where I should go; the "must see" bits of New Zeland which you just had to go and look at for yourself. My very good friend Sarah (far more experienced traveller than myself) immediatly suggested Abel Tasman National Park.

I had to push Richie a little on this as at first he wasn't convinced we would have time to fit it in. I persisted and we booked a days' hiking and kayaking in the National Park through the very kind person on reception at our hostel.

Again we were up early and were greeted with our first prolonged spell of rain, great! We chatted to a couple before we were picked up and they said they were going to give it a miss. "Fair weather chancers" nearly came out of my mouth but I remembered my manners and kept my council.

We were driven out to Marahau where, along with several others, we hopped on a "water taxi" for the journey to Bark Bay, where we were given our instructions for the morning and basically left to fend for ourselves.

We were to meet our Kayak instructor at 12.30 and started the brisk walk to our destination. Torrent Bay was the first beach that greeted us and again I was like the pro-verbeal kid in a sweet shop: the vista wsa just beautiful and it was wrapped in quiet. I wanted to stay and lay out my towel but we had a schedule to keep and we moved on.

Unfortunately we "moved on" a little too far and got a bit lost. Needless to say the result was that we greeted our kayak instructor an hour later than intended. After "inhaling" a lunch of chicken sandwiches and muffins, we observed and listened to our instructor give us a crash course in how to kayak. At this point the weather was started to turn and the wind was getting stronger.

"Pinsentt and Redgrave" headed out in their kayak and lets just say it took a while to get the direction side of things in sinc. But in sinc we did get and we paddled on for over an hour. At this point my competitive streak kicked in and I was hammering Richie for not being able to steer properly. Our group was a small one and I was determined not to be left behind, bringing up the rear.

In the end we had to stop short of a destination as the winds were too strong to carry on. We nearly capsized at one point! We were then picked up by our water taxi and headed back to be coached back to our hostel. All in all a fantastic day and again I got the chance to take some great pictures.

We left early again on Wednesday and headed further South to Franz Joseph. It does seem that the weather has turned and pouring rain followed us throughout our journey.

We are in a dorm of four people this time which is different but good fun none the less. We got chatting to our Aussie roomate and he was immediatly taking the michael with his country's recent cricketing success. I didn't rise to it. Fair play, they hammered us!

Going up the Glacier tomorrow. Should be good!