Day walks at Abel Tasman

After the heli-hike I had to a long drive to Motueka at the top of the South Island. At Hokitika I picked up another hitch hiker  - Sunanda from Taiwan, also going to Motueka, so I gave her a lift all the way, on the road leading to Motueka, Sunanda said she had a friend of a friend's place she was planning to stay at that night, but she hadn't told them she was coming or actually introduced herself at all, she was just going to turn up. I didn't think this was a good idea especially as the friends of the friend had no knowledge of her, we arrived into Motueka at 8.30pm and it was not really time to go hunting around the wop wops for some strangers place who weren't expecting guests. So I dropped her at a hostel and gave her my number in case she had trouble and said she was welcome to join me for a walk the next day on the Abel Tasman track, she texted later to say the hostel was full but a couple passing by took her in for the night for free.

Sunanda

I was also late getting to the Air bnb I had booked, it was also slightly in the wop wops and I had previously drawn the location on my notepad but I had the name of the road wrong and the instructions now didn't make much sense, I hadn't written the number down or anything useful, not that I could call any way as I had 3% battery left on my phone and it was about to shut down, but just enough to look at google maps and find the location.




I had one full day left in the south island, I had kayaked the Abel Tasman before but not walked any of the track, Sunanda joined me for the day, we took a water taxi from Marahau to Torrent Bay and walked the track back to Marahau.



The water taxi boat is taken to the edge of the beach by tracker, Sunanda posed in the Captains chair



How lovely, you could get a wheel chair down that

After a detour to Cleopatra's pools, which reminded me of Mossman Gorge in Queensland, Australia, and a few more detours to beaches on the way back to Marahau, it ended up as quite a long days walk. The Abel Tasman probably the easiest Great Walk in NZ - most of the track length we walked you could have pushed a wheelchair along, in some parts you could probably get two wheelchairs abreast and this became our track measuring tool.
Sunanda was great company and I was glad to have her with me on the walk, we were both quite tired by the end of it. Upon reaching the edge of town there was still a kilometre to the water taxi HQ where Cuthbert was waiting, there was a bend in the road so I couldn't tell how far away we were. I asked in my head:
'Cuthbert, how far away are you?'
'300'.
This number came to me instantly, so I though 'very well' and started counting from that point every other step, when I got to 250 paces I thought 'Well Cuthbert we're still not round the corner, it can't be 300', we got round the corner and at the count of 300 I was directly opposite Cuthbert. The car had been out of sight until the last 50 counts. That's how well I know my car. True story.
I had a coffee to revive myself at the café and as we went to leave I saw that Cuthbert had been parked on a 5 min parking slot for 7 hours!
Sunanda still hadn't got in touch with the friends of a friend, she tried calling them a few times but no answer, so I took her back to the hostel and this time she got a bed - the last one! The girl has luck or something. I bid her farewell and went to something my Air bnb hosts had told me about called Stories in the Park, in which people tell stories from their lives, I went along, listened to some stories and got some food. Sunanda had talked about her diet that serious Yoga people adhere to, you can't eat eggs or meat or things with the wrong vibe or something, anyway - I got a steak sandwich. It was delicious.