The World-Famous Abel Tasman National Park

Hello all,

We just made an overnight hiking/camping trip to the Abel Tasman, which is reknowned for its crystal waters, secluded bays and golden beaches - and, as you can see, it did not disappoint!

We hiked into the last leg of a 3-4 hike through the entire park and camped near the cabin shown in the pictures. The cabin is a converted old farm house and its really rustic, but surprisingly nice and clean inside.

NZ tracks all have cabins along the route at usual stopping points so that you don't have to carry your tent if you want to travel light. We have not stayed at a cabin yet, but will try that out in the future and report.

The Abel Tasman track is almost entirely on or near the coast of the Tasman Sea, so we passed through alot of beautiful, golden beaches and camped very close to one of them - park rules prohibit beach camping and we'll test out how strictly those rules are enforced at a later date :)

Definitely going back there, except on a kayak camping trip - kayaks are supposed to be the best way to explore all the wonderful bays and beaches - plus kayaks make it easier to carry wine and beer! That stuff is heavy in a backpack :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Queen Charlotte Track - Marlborough Sounds

Hi everyone,

We just hiked for a couple of days (and camped out one night) on the Queen Charlotte Track which overlooks the Marlborough Sounds. Most of the postcards you seen of New Zealand have pictures of the area around the Queen Charlotte Track, so you can imagine that it is an amazing area and the views are incredible. For those of you requiring some aid to your imagination, pics are attached :)



The track skirts the ridgeline in most places and tops the hills in others - most of the time, we were around a quarter of a mile up from the sea so that is why the views are so high above the water. Our camp was just below the ridge on a mountain overlooking the sounds and two harbors (you can make out the town lights in at least one of the pics). The views were awesome and the weather very nice - until around 9pm when it decided to start raining. The rain had hints of a hurricane and touches of a tornado at times throughout the night - it didn't stop raining and blowing until around 10am the next morning - so very glad the tent doesn't leak!



There was one other hiker sharing our campspot - a young hydrological engineer from Berlin. This guy took off work for a month to hike around and all over New Zealand! Evidently, foks from Europe do that sort of thing all the time - they chill pretty hard over there.



Anyway, despite the nasty weather that night, all the rain actually made the track look pretty incredible. Alot of the trees and flowers look very tropical and all the rain dripping off of everything just seemed to be appropriate.



Stay tuned - we're headed to the world-famous Abel Tasman national park in a couple of days. The Abel Tasman is supposed to have some of the most beautiful secluded bays and beaches in the world, so we are very excited!!

Talk to you all soon!

Shamu!!!!

Sorry we are a little behind on our blogging. Last week we went to do a little whale watching in Kaikoura a town about an hour and a half south of us. They took us out on a two and a half hour boat trip where they used sonar to follow the whales, determine their location and when they will rise to the surface. They say usually a whale is down anywhere from 40-60 minutes and then comes up for air 6-8 minutes so as soon as they reach the surface it is a hustle to get out to them. We had three encounters with sperm whales and one humpback. After we saw the last whale it was time to head back into land. On our way back in we ran into a pod of around 500 dolphins! It was the coolest thing ever.....they were all dancing around and doing repeated flips in the air. They loved the boat and came right up to it and jumped all over the place. It was absolutely incredible. What a wonderful afternoon, hope you enjoy the pictures.

And on the 4th day, they took home silver in a Picton, NZ Regatta

Lana and I were unexpectedly invited to sail in a Picton, NZ regatta on Sunday! Our host took us up the road to meet our closest neighbor and, after we exchanged hellos, Jeremy noticed our look of weathered old salty sailors and promptly invited us to hop on his sailboat as his secret Atlantic Ocean weapons.

Needless to say, there is a reason the Kiwis and Aussies are known as really good sailors - the weather in the Marlborough Sounds is challenging (Taylor would call the wind "honking" and it swirled around a lot). [See pics] As you can see, the Sound is closed in by some pretty high hills, so the air is kinda funneled through there creating strong winds. The islands that dot the Sound also block and channel the wind so that you have to be ready for strong gusts and dead spots - all in all, a really exciting place to sail.

It was not a perfect day weather-wise, but we had tons of fun and ended up taking 2nd place out of about 15 boats. We actually beat the hell out of everybody all 3 races (so all our pics are taken when we are waiting for everyone to finish), but were working against a handicap and were edged out by a couple of seconds after taking that into account.

We'll see if we can't take the gold next time. Love to all...

We Have Arrived!!!

We are here!!!! 27.5 hours later and we are on the other side of the world...with only a few bumps and bruises to show for it. We ran into a few glitches upon arrival into RDU which if you have ever flown with me you are well aware. The FAA is convinced I am a terrorist and are determined to make check-in a difficult process. We also ran into a slight weight problem with our luggage and had to dig out about 20 pounds worth of stuff to carry on but did finally work it all out and had about 5 minutes to sit down before our initial flight.

No serious terrorism threats in NZ, though - we didn't even have to go through security to get on our flight to Blenheim (where we are staying for November). Flying into the South Island over the Queen Charlotte Sound presented some breathtaking views of turquoise waters and small, steeply rising islands. Blenheim is in the world-famous vino-growing Marlborough region (rest assured, we have already begun sampling the grapes and will continue until we have a thorough knowledge of the region's flavors - as we should get to know the area we are living in :) ).

The folks we are house-sitting for are wonderful people. Alison is a native Kiwi and John is a transplant from Scotland (as are many Kiwis). They will be leaving us in charge of all their chickens, ducks, etc. on Sunday as they leave to vacation in Singapore and Vietnam! We will most likely be able to maintain the current numbers of livestock - Lana does want to sample some duck, though, so no promises.

In the coming days and weeks, we will likely check out the kayaking in the Marlborough region sounds, whale-watching, the world famous Abel Tasman national park and, of course, more vino. Stay tuned for more pictures . .. .

Take care and love to all,

Lana and Charles

The Eve

Hi Everyone, tomorrow is the big day. We are heading out around 11 tomorrow morning and should be there around dinner time on Wednesday for you guys but for us it will be Thursday morning. As soon as we get settled in I'll try to update you all with a post so you know we are safe and sound. I can't wait to take a ton of pictures so we have plenty for everyone to see. We still have a few more things left to do this evening so I better get back to it. Talk to you all soon!