Woke to a few raindrops on the windows (the first since we left the UK) but not to worry the rain had stopped and a bit cloudy so we had breakfast in the van. It's quite amusing watching the activities of other campers and this morning we watched a man disappear into the gents with his book! So I had to time him - 12mins. We tried to find a river path for a morning run but it seemed to disappear, so a fairly short run.
We headed to the north coast with the usual scenic stops. We stopped at Motueka information centre and the the library for free wi fi. We came away with loads of leaflets about trips to the Abel Tasman National Park. We browsed through all the leaflets whilst having lunch but ended up totally confused - not difficult. There are loads of companies all doing the same trips, canoeing with walking , water taxi with canoeing , water taxi with walking. Any combination you like, the overall conclusion was that they seem to charge a lot of money for anything going into the park. So tomorrow we are going to do a walk into the park and short canoe off the beach just to say we have been here and done that, but we are too old for 4 hour treks and 4 hour canoe trips.
An extremely windy road took us to the resorts near the park and we decided to stay at the small resort of Marahau , the Abel Tasman national park starts here. It has a lovely beach which you can swim from, but it is also very tidal so the sea had disappeared from sight when we got there. The campsite is quite busy as it has a backpackers lodge and lots of trendy hippy camper vans. We have parked next to this one in the picture. Anyway. after seeing the weather in the UK we have decided we could spend every UK winter in NZ in a camper and summer in Cornwall. Good idea?
The camp sites are all very well equipped, full kitchen facilities, showers, electricity and Graham has used a BBQ more times in the last few weeks than in the last 30 years!!