Hello Abel

Hey all

I guess this is the second part (OF MANY, help me!) of my monumental update effort seen as I am so far behind on this blog! I'm glad that I can remember all of this!

So after leaving the west coast we headed inland toward Nelson through the beautiful Buller Gorge towards Nelson and out towards Abel Tasman National Park.

We stayed in Nelson itself for a night, seemed like a nice enough place, its meant to be the sunshine capitol of the New Zealand. I would have liked to stay here for longer but we had only a few days in which to see Cape Farewell, Abel Tasman and to get back over to Piction in time to get our Ferry.

Well after leaving Nelson we drove along the coast to Cape Farewell, the drive was lovely although it was a tad overcast, shame. Along the way we stopped off at the worlds clearest fresh water spring, Pupu spring. It was quite an amazing sight, the water was so clear that it looked as if the water was only a metre or so deep when infact it was up to 6m in places. Six different spring sights pumped anywhere between 12m cubed and 23m cubed (averaging 14) of water a second! A monumental volume of water! Leaving the springs we continued the drive up towards Cape Farewell, stopping shortly at the base fo Farewell spit to walk around the park before heading back to to Nelson.

The next day we drove out to Abel Tasman national park to do a short day walk as I felt I could not miss this out being the one of the if not the most popular national park in New Zealand. It was beautiful if only spoiled buy the sheer number of people in the park. The track followed the coast either along the orange sand beach or paralleling the sea in the rainforest. The walk itself also included a water crossing at low tide across an estuary, a neat experience! Finishing the walk late afternoon we figured that we'd not make it back to Nelson by night fall and as such we ended up camping at Harwoods Hole, the largest in the southern hemisphere. Waking early the next day in order to avoid the warden we packed up and walked to the hole along a path right out of the Lord of the Rings! The hole itself was not all that impressive as you could not get close enough to the edge in order to see the bottom.

Leaving Abel Tasman we drove back towards Picton camping on the beach in the Marlborough sounds before catching the ferry the next day.

Right here comes the next update!

Adios only temporarily!