Last day of Abel Tasman tramp. Kayaking around Adele Island, return to Nelson for Indian dinner with David and Helen from Auckland.
We woke up for a 7:15 breakfast, packed the essentials that lay on the racks out back, the clothesline, the drying room, our bedroom floor, our accumulated stuff in the drawers … whew … and dressed for kayaking, walked to the front of the Torrent Bay Lodge. We put on our splash skirts and life jackets, said farewell to the hikers and pushed our bright yellow kayaks into the high tide.
Our guides, AJ and Paddy, took us south along the coastline, a rugged stretch lined with huge granite boulders and sandstone beneath rolling, forested hills. Just beautiful under sunny skies. Cynthia proves to be an indefatigable paddler and navigator. The ocean is like glass, the only swells coming from the 40-foot motorized catamarans that ply the waters with us tourist-trampers and some campers on their own.
After some time, our four kayaks — the couple from Maine, the father/daughter from Canada, the daughter’s Canadian husband who paddles with AJ, David and Helen (more about them later), Cynthia and David, and Paddy in a solo boat — we skirt Adele Island to see the New Zealand fur seals, which we hear long before we see them. They don’t bark; they sound like someone vomiting after a horrible drunk, although the babies bleating is more endearing.
AJ wants to bring a seal home with her. She LOVES the seals. She says a friend of hers told her that seals came into existence when a dog went swimming long ago and mated with a dolphin. There are more than 100 on the rocks around the island and swimming in the water. They brush the algae that grows on their whiskers and squeeze the oil that gathers in their lowest layers of fat when they lie on rocks out of the water, redistributing the oil when they return to the water so their fur is evenly saturated with it. We are in a marine sanctuary and must remain 20 meters from shore, so AJ and Paddy position their kayaks on the “inside” boundary for our group.
We paddle into small, secluded bays where the tidal surge moans into the deep recess of caves carved in the rock, we drift by cormorants — big shag, little shag, spotted shag — perched on trees along the shore, standing sentinel on rocks, building nests of sticks.
After about two-to-three hours, we sweep single file into a lagoon behind a beach at Apple Tree Bay and meet the hikers for lunch. Seagulls swoop low across the beach and pluck a boiled egg from one person, dive down and grab cheese from John McInerney’s hand. They strut on the sand, scuttling as fast as they can to grab whatever food may be available; you have to chase them away with sticks. Three twenty-something German babes emerge stark naked from the water.
We reload into our kayaks and paddle past Coquille Bay — named by French explorer Dumont D’Urville for the boat that first brought him to New Zealand in 1823 (A.J. Tells us he eventually fell in love with a … gal … and when it came time to leave the cove, he couldn’t bear to part, so he jumped from the boat into the sea and stayed). A final hour-and-a-half to Marahau where we barely make it over a sand bar exposed by the retreating tide and paddle for a short time down an estuary to our final destination: a tiny muddy beach near a huge parking lot where our Wilsons tour bus awaits after we get coffee or cold beers at a small cafe.
The bus motors us up, down and around the many volcanic hills between Kaiteriteri and Motueka, where most of us have to settle the bar tabs we’ve accumulated through the two lodges and four nights of our terrific tramp. And after heartfelt hugs to and from AJ and Shannon, we board the Wilsons bus and are back at our hotel in Nelson, where we gussy up to meet David and Helen at a wonderful craft beer joint called The Free House (95 Collingsworth Rd.) — in a small, precious wood church that has been converted into a bar with tables inside and out (David selects a Rode Island red (high malt level, slightly sweet, not as bitter as most IPAs) — and across the street to [name coming later], a crowded, boisterous Indian restaurant. A wonderful evening that ends with the six of us walking along “the river that runs through it” … Nelson, really, but, like the wonderful book and movie, life itself … and we are asleep by 10:30, which is past David’s bedtime.
Another day in Paradise.
Two Tramps 