We saw a Tui!

We had a rather good nights sleep last night but we woke up still without a real plan. We found out that most of the Abel Tasman national park is only accessible by boat unless you are willing to spending a good few days doing the great walk here. We decided to head to the local i-site to get advise from the experts about what is best to do here with our time frame. We spent an hour in total talking to the lovely lady who gave us so much advise, help and general information about the area. After much consideration we have decided to do an eco tour tomorrow by boat of the Abel Tasman national park with a marine biologist guide and the following day we are going on a guided tour of Farewell Spit, a huge natural sand spit at the top of the South Island. It feels good to have some direction to the next few days. That gives us one day to drive down from the area towards Picton to catch the ferry on the 31st. There are water taxis running through the Abel Tasman but with only one running a day in each direction this means you can only visit one bay or two if you have time to walk between the two before the next ferry. We felt we would be worrying so much about making it to the next bay in time for the ferry that the tour seemed like a more relaxed and informative option. Plus we are supporting the maintenance and protection of the national park by booking this tour. Only the other day did the community guided by our tour guide manage to plant 1500 native trees back into the forest to try and restore the native bush. For today we decided to drive up towards Golden Bay to see a few areas of beauty before returning to see Split Apple Rock at low tide. Because we spent so long in the information centre it was only when we came out did I realise I hadn't drunk much water so a headache was beginning to show. We began our drive which ended up being very windy. The road takes you up and over a hill but on a windy route so my head and stomach began to not appreciate the driving and constant changing direction. We did make it to a view point near the top of the hill which is a 5 minutes walk through the forest from the carpark. As we were walking Nick called out in excitement that he'd seen a Tui fly over. Tuis are a native NZ bird that has two white fluffy bits under it's chin and a beautiful sheen to it's feathers. Luckily after a little more looking I managed to see one as well in the trees. It's our first time seeing one so we were pretty excited. The view at the end of the track was rather incredible but seeing a Tui was even better. On the way back we saw a couple more and now know what their weird sounding call sounds like as well to spot them in future. I really wasn't feeling driving much further so we just decided to head back to the rock instead and even that was challenging for my head. After some lunch we walked down to the beach and there it was, a huge round boulder split straight down the middle. We had worn our waterproof shoes so after viewing the rock from the beach we were able to climb over the rocks and in and out of the water to get a closer view from the other side which was pretty cool and something only we seemed able to do. After exploring all the caves and rocks we headed to a shop to get a few packed lunch things for the next few days before going to a powered site for the night. It's meant to be a cold one so we wanted a heater and it was very nice to have a warm shower anyway.Read more