Tropical paradise

After resting in Picton for two more days we headed out for Nelson. It didn't take us long to catch a ride, 3 girls turned around to pick us up after initially driving past us. They had a typical backpackers van with a bed in the back instead of seats, but this was no problem for us and so we set out. About halfway to Nelson the girl behind the wheel says that she's starting to run low on gass and that we should keep a lookout for a gas station. 5 Minutes later she says we're REALLY low on gas with probably enough gas to last us another 10 minutes. 10 Minutes later we're still in the middle of the back-country with not a single structure in sight, let alone a gas station, and she's really starting to panic now. I shoot jasper a quick glance and see that he's thinking the same as me, this sort of stuff only happens to us.
Surprisingly 10 minutes later we're still going strong and are even approaching civilisation again with a spot of luck we might even make it to a gas station! And sure enough we make it without so much as a stutter from the engine; girls get way too excited over silly things like being low on gas. . .
They drop us off in a Holiday Park in Nelson, which was about 20 minutes walking from city centre despite being the closest one around. We pitched our tent in the concrete-like ground, unable to force our pegs in deeper than about 3 centimeters and praying that it'll hold.
After leaving our tent in this mildly unstable position we head to town to buy some groceries and check out the local activities. We notice a flyer saying the largest flying fox in New Zealand is here in nelson so we call them up and arrange for pickup for the next day.
The following day we head to the i-centre to await pickup and when, 30 minutes after the agreed on time, they still haven't picked us up we decide to call them and see what's up. They apologise and say their van was full (or something like that) and that someone would come around to pick us up in 15 minutes.
20 Minutes later we finally get picked up and eventually driven up to the top of a hill where we get strapped in some hanging seats and released to soar off the mountain. Even though we reached speeds of up to 85 km/h it wasn't really all that exciting. Fun? Yes. Worth 75 dollars? Maybe not. But still, it was an interesting experience and gave us something to do for the day.
After we bought some lunch in the supermarket we headed back to the campsite where I sat down in the kitchen to heat my pizza bread while Jasper went back to the tent to grab cutlery. After 2 minutes Jasper comes back empty handed and says "Are you coming? We're gonna have to file a report to the police, they broke into our tent and stole my netbook." The bastards had turned our bags completely inside out leaving our belongings scattered through the tent. It seemed that all they took was Jasper's netbook and my universal adapter and cellphone charger, perhaps mistaking them for the adapter for jasper's netbook.
We stayed in nelson for a few more days to file an official report and gather all the required information regarding the netbook to file for insurance.
Luckily we didn't have anything special stored on the netbook, we had all the pictures either on our cameras or posted on the internet and there wasn't much room left for anything else.

After a few days we set out for Motueka from where we wanted to go into the Abel Tasman National Park for a multi-day kayak trip. We found the Holiday park there to be a lot more luxurious than the one in Nelson, they even had a heated pool and a jacuzzi (which we could use for free with our top 10 membership card). We decided to relax here for a few days before heading off to Marahau from where we would hop on kayaks and into the park.
We booked everything from the Motueka i-centre and to my surprise jasper suggested we do a 5-day trip (which seemed to be the maximum amount of days you could hire for) as he didn't seem to be too keen on kayaking when I suggested it a month earlier.
We also stocked up on supplies while we still had acces to a supermarket, which meant lots of canned food (baked beans and canned spaghetti, yummy!) and food bars.
After spending a night in Marahau we headed to the kayak company and received instructions on how to pack our stuff so that they stayed dry and how to handle the kayak in different sorts of weather. I was in the front and jasper in the back, operating the rudder; it seemed my only special task was to break the waves "The person in front is going to get wet" he said. . . great!
We headed to the beach where he made us paddle around for a bit to show we paid attention to his instructions and then headed out for ourselves off to our first campsite! The weather wasn't particularly enjoyable when we set out and it promised to get a lot worse before it got any better. As we rounded the first set of cliffs we beared the full brunt of the wind and waves started to crash into us, occasionally splashing over the boat and into my face. The scenery was beautiful but the incessant rain meant we weren't able to take any pictures nor enjoy it to the fullest; we'd just have to pray the weather would improve over the next days.
After only about 2 hours of paddling we arrived at the campsite, and not a moment too soon; my muscles were aching and my shoulders hurt from the unusual motion. The rain was still coming down in streams so we had no choice but to set up our camp as fast as possible and pray it didn't get too wet. After the tent was up we explored the rest of the camp, which consisted of one tap with water you had to treat or boil before you could drink it and two toilets the were basically holes in the ground with a cabin over it; they smelled horrible.
We spent the next 2 hours or so reading in our tent, where it was at least dry. By the time the rain had stopped and it was safe to come out we saw that there were a lot more tents around us. After exploring the area around the campsite and walking up to a lookout point we decided to make dinner, forced to eat it on the table furthest away from our tent because the other occupants had claimed the other tables. They'd piled all their stuff on them so we couldn't use them despite the fact they weren't actually sitting at them. At dusk we brushed our teeth and headed to bed, though we wouldn't be able to sleep until the americans from the tents next to us finally shut up and went to bed 2 hours later. The following morning we quickly walked to a neighbouring hut where we replenished our drinking water, before packing up our stuff in our kayaks and heading out again. The weather had increased significantly, despite the fact that there was still a strong breeze it was warm and sunny. This lifted our spirits and made us forget about our aching for a while at least.
The landscape looked even better in the bright sun, with blue sea wherever you looked and golden beaches scattered all around the coast. On the way to our second camp we passed an island that doubled as a seal colony and stopped there to take some pictures. The still rather large waves meant that it was extremely difficult to take sharp pictures though, so unfortunately most of the pictures turned out extremely blurred.
As we passed a river inlet we decided to paddle into it, here the water was extremely calm and jasper even managed to climb out of the kayak at one point to answer nature's call.
At about 2 in the afternoon we reached our second campsite, which was situated in a beautiful bay with gorgeous sandy beach all around it. This time it was much more enjoyable to pitch our tent, seeing as there was no need to hurry in order to keep the inside dry. Afterwards we explored the campsite and found that this one even had a sink! Though the water still wasn't drinkable. The toilets were the same, except for the fact that these had wasps inside them, angry wasps.
We spent the rest of the day hanging out and climbing over the rocks. Eventually the other campers started to trickle in, including the very same Americans that annoyed us so much the day before, this time we'd claimed our table before they could though.
After some more canned food for dinner (and a slight crisis with wet matches) we dozed off and read while the sun was slowly starting to sink behind the hills in the distance. When it got too dark to read we turned in again, and though the Americans were just as noisy as the day before we were now tired enough to sleep through it.
The third day the weather was perfect and sea was very calm, so we even managed to snap a few decent pictures; though it was still hard to get the horizon straight, with the kayak bobbing up and down all the time. We passed another seal colony, though this one was significantly bigger and there were a lot more seals on it. We explored another river (almost getting stranded in the process) but were too tired to do much more and so headed towards our next campsite. This one was even more luxurious with flush flush toilets and a special shelter for cooking! There were still a lot of wasps but none of them in the toilets fortunately. The beach was pristine and the sea was just the right temperature for swimming.
The next we gently started to make our way back to marahau, stopping at one more campsite before we'd reach the town again the next day. Our muscles were really starting to hurt now and we were very grateful when we finally arrived at the campsite, the one where we gathered water on our first day. This one was the most luxurious of them all with flush toilets and drinkable water!
As we were about to set up our tent I spotted a guy and a girl walking to the toilets and i knew I'd seen them before somewhere. Just as I was telling Jasper that I thought those were the people that gave us a ride to Whitianga way back when we were still in coromandel they turned as well and said "Hey, didn't we give you guys a ride a few months back?" We caught up with them and exchanged stories before they headed off to the beach and we set up our tent.
The last day seemed like it was the longest (though in truth it might have been the shortest) of the entire trip, our muscles were starting to protest heavily and the going was starting to become tough. Because we had to make a long stretch through open water, rather than staying close to the shore it seemed like we were going even slower than we actually were. By the time we landed on the beach we decided to just beach the kayak and quickly go to the shop to buy food and an ice-cream. As we returned from the shop and looked to see if our kayak was still there we noticed that it was no longer fully on the beach was starting to get surrounded by water; the tide was coming up a lot faster than we'd thought. I made a quick run for the kayak (it was my idea to go to the shop in the first place) and waded the last few meters through knee deep water before arriving at the kayak just as it was beginning to drift.
We dragged it up further on the beach and called the kayak company who said that they'd pick it up at about 4:30, which meant that we'd have to either wait for about 4 hours or just pick up the most important stuff and walk 20 minutes back to the camp; we did the latter ofcourse.
As we were enjoying a nice hot shower after 5 days of salt water I really noticed how tired my arms were when I almost didn't have enough strenght left to wash my hair.
That afternoon we picked up our bags from the kayak company and set up our tent. We decided we'd stay in the Motueka top 10 Holiday park with it's jacuzzi and heated pool for 2 more days to recover before making our way further along the west coast.

Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%2023%20februari/