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Hey everyone
Today we went for a trek in Abel Tasman National Park!
The day began painfully early, as we were picked up from outside our hostel at 6am. Over an hour later, we arrived at the outskirts of the national park and at the Water Taxi base. We waited excitedly to board our water taxi that would first take us to see a few sights, drop us off at one of the beaches, and then later in the day pick us up at a beach a few hours walk away from the first.
We boarded the water taxi and were first taken to Split Apple Rock. This was an unusual looking rock that looked as if a knife had cut it right down the middle. After a few pics, we raced down the coast, past a few beautiful bays, and stopped at Tonga Island, a tiny island that's home of a seal colony. We parked up right next to the seals, and watched as they dived in the water, swam around, and sunbathed on the rocks. There must have been about 40 of them, and we saw a couple of little penguins too.
Our final stop of the morning was at Tonga Bay, where we jumped off to start our walk. The track took us along the coastline, up and over hills in between each beach, and we often stopped to take in the beautiful views of the bays. We were really lucky with the weather as the sun was out almost all day, and we stopped for lunch on the secluded Bark Bay. It was a lovely walk, the coastline reminded us of Thailand, and throughout the day we chatted lots, about everything from whether we believe in aliens to our favourite Jonathan Creek episodes.
We reached the end of the walk with about an hour to spare, on a beach with a few houses on it. The national park limits the number that can be built, so the few houses on the quiet beach are worth millions each. They have solar panels on the roof as there's no electricity in the park, and the beach is accessible only by boat.
When the water taxi arrived to take us back to the town, it wasn't able to get very close to the beach as the tide had gone out. This meant we had to take off our socks and shoes, roll up our trousers and walk through the very cold water about 25 metres out to the boat. Christina 'jokingly' asked the boat driver if he would give her a piggy-back out to the boat, and, much to Christina's delight, he said he would. Alex, on the other hand, arrived at the boat with freezing feet. Fortunately on board there were towels waiting. The boat raced back to the town where fortunately there was no wading through water to be done. We arrived back at the hostel tired and ready for a big meal. Xxx
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