Nelson and Abel Tasman Sat-Sun 24-25 January

Paradise here I come!!!

Saturday morning and I tried to sneek silently our from Dan's house at 6.30am (why always soo early...) to catch the ferry to the South Island.

Hehe, well I was exhausted, and after looking out on the slowly disappearing Wellington, I found a small couch (!) and fell asleep.

The ferry ride takes about 3hours (approx.), and I slept for 2.5hours =)

I woke up and went up on the sundeck just in time to look as we went into the bay to Picton - it was beautiful - the landscape was amazing, the sun was shining from a clear blue sky, it was warm and I had still some chocolate muesli bars in my bag - it couldn't get any better than this!

Or wait! It sure could!

Off the ferry and on the MagicBus, this time Andy was behind the wheels - and he'd be my driver for the next three journeys. Andy took us to go for a swim in one of the rivers between Picton and Nelson - and ohmigod! it was brilliant! It kind of reminded me of the swim we took at Mossman Gorge in the rainforest north of Cairns (I've uploaded a video from that place now - see previous posts), only that it was frickin' freezin' at this place - so it took some time to get in, but once in it was perfect!

And the journey in/to Paradise continues:

When we got to Nelson, I took off for the Palace Backpackers (behind the Shell station, close to YHA Backpackers) and I'm so coming back here some day!

I had pre-booked all my accommodation in NZ, but MagicBus offered to set people up with beds for the nights by sending around a booking sheet in the bus when we left from one place to another. This is a good way of making sure that you're staying with the same people you've been travelling with all day/week etc., but if you know you really want to stay at one place and it turns out that it's fully booked, then you're stranded with whatever MagicBus can find for you. So I had already booked everything in advance - and it turned out that in 8 times out of 10, I'd booked the one Magic recommended =)

But in Nelson I was on my own - no-one from the bus had ever heard of the Palace Backpackers. It's located on a hill (no-one told me this!), so it was a bit hard to get up with all my gear, but once there - ah, totally worth it. No bunks - only proper beds!

It's an old house, not built for the purpose of hosting backpackers in the first place - but somehow it's now doing exactely that - and I was in the room with the city view - a huge balcony with sun chairs and tables encircled the top floor. And after taking a quick shower, I placed myself with fruit, a glass of wine and a good book in the afternoon sun on the terrass. (this is where a lot of you guys' postcards got written, in paradise by other words) (you see the little blue house on the hill - that's right, that's the Palace seen from the church)

Although Paradise slipped away from me a little later that evening - I was going to put my photos onto a cd to make some room for the following days hike in Abel Tasman, when I discovered that the cable connecting the camera to the computer was gone... I still to this day don't know where it is, but it must be somewhere in Taupo I think...

So things got a bit hectic since I had to get rid of the pics from the camera memory, otherwise I'd only have 20-30 pics left... After a lot of struggling I found a german (there's loads of germans and netherland-people in NZ) with a computer that could help me, so almost everything turned out alright =)

Sunday:

After way too little sleep it was rise and shine for the 4-6 hour long hike in Abel Tasman National Park. And who gets on the bus five minutes after they've picked me up, but not Christian! =)
He was going to the park to do a three day hike - which sounds awesome and something I'm definitely going to do next time, now I didn't really have time at all... So we chatted on the bus and on the boat, and then had a fare-well-moment when I got off at the beach - we did the fare-well-wave really nice I think ;)


Abel Tasman was an explorer a number of years ago (around 1600), and he didn't really stay long in NZ, maybe a couple of days if even that - then he and his crew fled from the Maori to the then more civilised Australia. But even if he didn't actually do anything in NZ at all, there's a surprisingly large amount of stuff named after him - like Abel Tasman National Park, and the sea between Oz and Nz is the Tasman Sea (and in oz we have Tasmania), and then there's tonnes of other places and things - a number of streets, hills and woods, a river, lake, glacier, district and mountain, some animals (the tasmanian devil and tiger), a plant and even a band - all with something to do with Abel Tasman.

Now, if Tasman had in fact stayed longer in his future park, he would never have left I'd say! This place took the breath out of me not once, not twice but many, many times!

I actually got really angry - it's so frickin' beautiful that it's impossible!

Everywhere you look there's a postcard-view - and since you know that your camera can't possibly take photos that good, or capture it the way it's supposed to be - you just get mad
- why the hell does it have to be THAT beautiful?!?! I mean cut it out!!...

Hehe, of course I loved it - I just got a little bit frustrated from time to time that's all.

I walked the track with two other MagicBus-girls, one from England and one from the Netherlands - I don't remember their names but I'm pretty sure I didn't give them the adress to this blog, so since they can't read it, they can't be offended by my lack of memory =)

We stopped at two beaches to go for a swim - and it was incredible - paradise Paradise PARADISE! Why oh why couldn't I just take the time and stay at one of these beaches for a couple of days - sleep in one of the huts, just relax and try and get hold of Christian to share his food ;)

But we had to move on - we didn't know exactly how long it was going to take, and we wanted to catch the earlier bus back, otherwise it'd be too late to get some dinner back in Nelson..
So we walked, talked and took a lot of photos =)

Our plan was to lay down on the beach a little bit while waiting for the bus (if we were that early), and we were dying for a swim (just a quick dip really!) for most of the walk - it was that hot.. Although our plan was completely altered once we got out of the bush close to the pick-up place, and we saw that there were no beach anymore... The tide had come and swept the water a kilometer out, so all that was left was a muddy bank filled with stones and some sea weed.. And we didn't have the time to drag us out to the water, swim and come back before the bus left..

So we bought some postcards and jumped on the first bus back.
That shower was divine (once I got it that is...)!
















This is the thing about travelling with MagicBus (or any other bus tour around NZ), that you always arrive quite late in the afternoon - around 5-6pm most days, so everything's pretty much closed. This is of course because they take you on a lot of side tracks during the day so you get to see a lot of stuff between cities, but if you're only spending one night in a town - be prepared that all you'll see of that town is the hostel; You arrive around 5pm, check in, find and have some dinner, and then sleep before taking off between 7-8.30am the morning after (it's mostly around 8am). And if you do like me, spend two nights in a place, but the day you're there you go on an excursion - then it's pretty much the same thing - everything's closed by the time you get back from your trip.

So when I got back from the hike, I decided not to take a shower but went straight out to the main street - I wanted to check out the church - it's kinda cool, it's metal and it gives the most entertaining sounds when it rings - it's a new melody everytime =)

And the street was almost dead (everything was closed, but of course, not only was is after 6pm, it was also sunday..), but in the corner straight below the church I found some restaurants with lots of people sitting outside in the sun - it made me think about the restaurants back in Sweden, you know how they alway put tables outside in the summer and they're always packed with happy swedes ('cause summer is pretty much the (only) time we lighten up.!) - so I got nostalgic and decided there on the spot that I wanted to eat out - no matter the cost! =)

Well I took the cheapest dish - mussels in white wine sauce with lime, chili and foccacia - and it was excellent!

So it was all very good, and would have been a nice way to finish off the weekend, and saying bye to Nelson - if it hadn't been for those small, annoying flies that looked like food flies - but I swear to god - they bit me all over! I tried to eat and take it easy, but I ended up scooping up the food and gulping down the wine while slapping those awful creatures away from my legs, feet, arms and neck - no-one else seemed to have a problem and I was wondering if I imagined it all - but back at the backpackers I learnt that I had now had my first encounter with the infamous new zealand sandfly... The reason nobody else had a problem was the simple solution of insect repellent.. I had none...

Tomorrow it's off for Greymouth (not very exciting but still, it's all a part of the story)
take care!