Sunday was a day of relaxing, sleeping and planning the next adventure...Abel Tasmin! After food shopping in Pack n' Save (the cheapest supermarket you can find over here), we drove North West up to Abel Tasmin. I stopped in the town just before Abel Tasmin National Park, called Motueka and checked into another cosy hostel called The Laughing Kiwi Backpackers. It's so quiet here, only one house open and only 2 dorm rooms are being used so really quiet and relaxing.

Monday 8th July...we were all set for our trekking challenge we had planned for the next two days in Abel Tasmin National Park. I managed to get myself up to Josh who was waiting for me at Abel Tasmin (first by bus and then my first hitch-hike 2k down the road EXCITING!) it was a beautiful day, sun was shining, with not a cloud in the sky. Our initial plan was to walk to Bark Bay Hut which was meant to be a 7-8 hour walk. We started the trek at 9.30am and arrived at Bark Bay at 2.30pm...so decided to carry on to Awaroa Hut, which was another 4 hour walk. We realised it would be dark by the time we arrived, but it was forecast to be rainy the following day so we agreed that the walk would be more enjoyable today! After a long 31k, we finally arrived at Awaora Hut! YIPEE! I was relieved to take my shoes off, my feet had been killing me. And I soon realised why - a blisted had developed and popped and...eww, gross! Along with that my little toe had rubbed again my other toe causing that to bleed too. Just living up to the travellers feet once again! Geeze, they really are horrible feet now. Anyway, once Josh made me a nice cheese toasty, I was all good. We tucked into some pasta too, enjoyed looking at the sky which was littered with so many stars, it was incredible to see. We were the only people in the hut again, so we slept by the fire. This hut at $34 each - a little more than the $5 hut we slept in the other night, but we did have chopped wood prepared for us so we didn't have to spent time chopping wood which was nice. The hut was well insulated and we managed to get the room pretty damn warm. I was up every hour throughout the night throwing more logs in the fire so it wouldn't go out! It was well worth it J so warm and cosy.

4.15am we were packing our stuff away in preparation to cross the river at low tide. We could either do this at 4am or at 4pm, so we weren't going to wait all day to cross the river! With our head torches on and shoes and socks off we headed towards the river...(ok so the Information lady was worried that we wouldn't figure out where the track was on the other side of the river crossing in the dark, so the previous day we decided to line up some pebbles to point us in the right direction. Then in the morning we lined the pebbles up with 3 stars and tried to use them to point us in the right direction...we could only hope this would work :s

On entering the water it was bloody painful, (to put it bluntly). So unbelievably cold! It went from bloody cold feet, to freezing feet, to stinging feet, to numb feet, to do I actually have any feet right now?! It was an experience I would not like to be put through any time soon, and to be honest I wouldn't be upset in the slightest if I never experienced this pain again. And what's worse, is that we crossed the first river crossing not realising we had 2 others ahead of us! Ahh! There was nothing we could do but plough through it as fast as we could...that way we could put our shoes on as soon as possible before our feet developed phenomena. And I'm not joking, they really could have fallen off. We finally made it out of the water and helped each other put our shoes back on our sandy wet feet. We forgot that any other part of us was cold, so that was a positive. We kept following 3 stars as there was nothing else to go by. And my oh my I love those stars...directly in front of us stood the orange sign YIPEE. We were so chuffed with ourselves we almost immediately forgot about our frozen feet (well, almost). On we went towards Totaranui. The walk in the dark was actually really fun, and we got the pleasure of seeing the sunrise too which was beautiful. We were extremely lucky as the forecast was heavy rain, but we did not get rained on all morning. It was in fact clear skies throughout our 8 hour walk. We walked up to Separation Point, the very tip of Abel Tasmin to find seals swimming around and chilling on the rocks in the sun. It was a great place to stop for lunch, and although it was only 10am, it felt like lunch time so we sat on the top of the mountain looking out at sea with our tuna sandwiches. It was a 2 hour walk back to Totatanui to catch the water taxi home. We had to wait for an hour and a half, but we were kept entertained with an old English couple who had been living in NZ for 40 years. They both used to be PE teachers, and they were incredibly fit. At the age of 67 and 69, they were walking through the mountains, 6 hours a day, stopping in huts at night...they were totally inspirational and I am determined to be like them at that age. They also gave me a lift back to my hostel that evening which saved me having to catch a bus or hitch-hike back. After a nice warm shower some hot porridge, a glass of red wine and a bit of chocolate sat by the fire, it was time to sleep.

Wednesday 10th July has been a day of sleeping, blogging, shopping and guess what, yes more planning! So I think tomorrow I'm heading to Nelson National Park and I will try another 2 day walk there. It looks beautiful on the internet, I don't really want to miss it. The stray bus doesn't go that way, but luckily Josh is planning to go there tomorrow too so we will probably go together again! My good old walking buddy J Then somehow I will have to figure out how to get back on the Stray bus route so I can hop back on it!!

I am in loving the scenery here, it's just beautiful. I look out of the hostel window and can see endless mountains, some of which have been beautifully decorated with a sprinkle of icing sugar, sorry getting carried away there, being stupid - I do really just mean snow. The Abel Tasmin walk itself was a lovely coastal walk but I would say that once you have walked for an hour along the track you have pretty much seen all there is to see (apart from the seals at Separation point & walking along the beaches beyond Awaroa). It is very similar to the Gold Coast in Oz, so it is stunning, especially in the sunshine but I think the true Abel Tasmin experience here involves a bit of walking, kayaking to different bays, chilling on the beach, maybe having BBQ's, and enjoying the open huts in the middle of the summer. It would have been nice to experience this, but also I have heard that the National Park is heaving in the summer so in a way we were quite lucky to have this place pretty much all to ourselves, bumping into a total of 4 people throughout the park. Heaven!