Hello our faithful followers!

So after a month of being in New Zealand we finally started our journey over to the south island. After a very early start we boarded the Interislander ferry to the south island. The water was a bit choppy through the cook straight but other than that it was a smooth 3 hour journey into the port at Picton.

We drove for about 45 min until we got to Nelson, this used to be the stop on the journey until it changed last year, however people still got on and off at this point so we did a food shop whilst waiting. We then set off to Kiateriteri. As we pulled up to the hostel we could see why they had changed the stop from Nelson. The hostel was about 2min walk from the beach in this little secluded bay on the edge of Abel Tasman National Park. Even though it was 4pm the sun was still shining so we all headed to the beach and Ben went for a swim in the sea with some of the guys. The night was pretty quiet as we had all been up since 6am; however there were some serious snorers in our room so not many people slept.

The next day Ben and I took a trip into Abel Tasman. As the national park is all about its gorgeous bays and lagoons we started our full day hike with a ride on the aqua taxi. It was a lovely day and we saw lots of gorgeous bays and hillsides. Along the way we saw little blue penguins - they are so small and cute and the only penguin that like warm water! As a nice surprise we also came upon a pod of common dolphins, there were probably about 70 - 100 dolphins all around our little speed boat playing and jumping, it was truly amazing and unexpected. Our trip was called Sand and Seals trek so of course the next stop on the boat was to see seals, some of the males were huge however they were very well camouflaged on the rocks so it took us a while to spot them. At last we got to Tonga Bay where we were to start our 13k hike, the weather was beautiful and the scenery was even better. The hike wasn't too hard, lots of up and down hills but they all ended with gorgeous bays with bright blue water and white sandy beaches so we couldn't complain too much. The walk took us about 4 ish hours to get to our final beach (Torrent Bay) with a stop off in Bark bay for lunch. The Aqua taxi home didn't come until 4pm so we had an hour to waist. So Ben and I took our spot on a wooden jetty to soak up the sun. However Ben being Ben can't sit still for long and decided to get changed into his board shorts so he could go for a swim. He came back to the jetty and accidently dropped his boxers into the water - running after them he then managed to trip and cut a nice chunk out of the front of his big toe, lovely! Esp when you are in the middle of nowhere waiting for a boat to come and get you! Luckily he had some plaster type things in his bag so we got it taped up. But as you can imaged I was a very supportive girlfriend and didn't laugh at the situation at all..hehe We arrived back to the hostel with no more injuries and settled down for a fairly early quiet night as we were the only people in the 10 bed dorm.

On our final day we had a bit of a lay in, and decided to just go for bit of a walk around the area, it wasn't very sunny and had rained early on in the morning. So after a lazy day we decided to go to the bar to get to know the people on the bus that we would be spending the next few days with. Everyone we met seemed lovely and it was a lovely evening and ending to our little beach get away.

From Kiateriteri with love

Nikki and Ben xxx