After arriving in Picton I decided to take the Queen Charlotte drive, which goes past the Queen Charlotte Sound. Again I was impressed with the county’s beauty. I decided to drive to Mautueka. Here I got the idea to do the Abel Tasman Coastal walk. I managed to book this online and so went and did some shopping for 4 days of walking. I was quite excited about the walk. I had a feeling it was going to be very relaxed walk. Walking, tanning & swimming in the sea. It was a fun 4 days and every night I met new people on route. On the last night 2 of the Dutch girls that I had met decided to walk to the Lodge, which has a smart restaurant attached to it for a decent dinner instead of hiking nosh. They asked me if I wanted to join them and I said yes. It’s a 30 minute walk to the Lodge. The dinner was excellent & we had a great time. We were the last people there and so got invited by the locals to join them at the fireplace. We did and then it got really late and one of the staff started breaking stuff so the manager said we should take her home. But a 100m down the road she just sat down and so it required him and me to pick her up and carry her the next 500m to her place. After getting her in the house I decided to call it a night. In order to get back to the hut I had to cross a lagoon and as it was high tide it came up to just below my trousers. The water was cold and not too pleasant at 5am. Walking back the sunrise was looking good and I thought I should take a photo of it. I then realized that I had left my camera back at the Lodge. So it was back across the lagoon, 30 min back to the lodge and then back again across the lagoon. I hate it when things like this happen don’t you.I then headed off to Nelson where I camped for the night. I went to the Boat Shed restaurant and had an awesome seafood meal. The next day I drove to Murchison and hired a MTB. I did a 30km ride around the area, which was a good afternoon out. I also walked up a valley to see the effects of the 1968 earthquake in the area. I wanted to do a long ride the next day, but the bike I hired was crap and would of done more damage than good. So I decided to book a white water rafting and canoe trip for the next day. The next day I did my canoe trip and white water rafting trip which was fun, but I must confess I was expecting a lot bigger water. I guess I’m going to have to wait for the Colorado river. That night I had dinner and drinks with some of the rafting staff and it was a good night out. The next day I did a very long drive from Murchison, Westport, Greymouth, Springs Junction, Hamner Springs & then to Christchurch. I decided to leave the southern of the South Island to another time, as I did not have enough time allocated to do it well. Christchurch is a lovely city and I spent 2 days there. I then flew back from Christchurch to Sydney.