Jan 2008

We took a break from apple thinning and went back to being tourists this past weekend. Just north of Nelson is Abel Tasman park, and is home to some fantastic beaches, kayaking hotspots, and beautiful hiking trails. Our boss at the orchard, Berne (who is hilariously full of entertaining stories), has a touring sea kayak that he let us borrow for the weekend. We took the big banana boat up to the park on Saturday, getting to the beach just in time for low tide. If you haven’t been to this area, you wont understand how disappointing that is. When the tides here go out, they really go out. We ended up having to carry the 45-kilo kayak and 20 kilos of our gear out to the water. It turned into a lot of pushing and pulling across the sand.

Brody has been dying to sea kayak since we've been here, and I think it's save to say our efforts this weekend fully satisfied his desires. The first hour or two on the water were fantastic - just cruising around the area and getting acquainted with the boat. By mid-afternoon, the winds kicked up and added some difficulty to our attempts at paddling. The sea got fiercely choppy as we headed out of the sheltered cove we were in. So we decided to take a break before heading into what the locals call "The Mad Mile," which is a stretch of exposed coast; no sandy beaches to swim to or take refuge on when the going gets tough. And boy did the tough get going. After our snack break, we drove right into some pretty scary swells out in the point. Berne told us the kayaks are often referred to as divorce kayaks, and our little situation made us understand why. There was quite a bit of screaming going on while we were tossed around by 2-3 meter swells. If you topple over in these kayaks, you cant really get back in. You have to swim to the beach and re-launch. But remember, in the Mad Mile, there are no beaches so you are out of luck if you fall out of the boat. We finally made it far enough around to a little cove called Te Pukatea. It was beautiful there, so our luck wasn't too bad. We also found out that we could hike to our campsite from the beach in about 15 minutes, so we didn't have to get back in the boat that day. We just loaded up our dry bags and tent and headed off for our site in Anchorage.

The next morning, the seas were perfect (the calm, green water we had been seeing in the brochures) so we headed further up the coast in search of a river that could be accessed at high tide. We saw a little seal along the way, but he didn't want to play with us, much to my disappointment. We looked and looked for the right bay (our map wasn't waterproof, so we were going by memory) and finally exhausted ourselves and took a rest on a beach. I'm glad no one else was on the beach because it was an extremely ungraceful landing. When you come into the shore, the from person has to pull off their spray skirt, anchor their paddle, and jump out as fast as possible to pull the boat up and out of the waves. This beach was a bit steep and the waves were a little big, and I ended up being knocked over by the boat. It was a disaster. But the good news is that we happened to crash land on the beach where the river was located! We paddled up for a bit, relieved to have some waveless water. The waves gave us a run for our money back into the ocean though.

Our way back to the harbor was peaceful and fairly uneventful. I'm pretty sure we overshot what our arms could handle by a lot, since we were resting every ten stokes on the way back. We also ended up coming in at low tide. More pushing and pulling our way back to the shore while all the chartered tours got rides back in tractor-trailers. We commented on the fact that we were willing to haul all our own gear now, while we're young and poor, but if we have to do it again in the future, we'll pay the extra cash to have someone do it for us!

That’s all for now! One more week of apple thinning and then we're back to roaming the land!