The Abel Tasman National Park, crossing over to the other side and the parting of the ways

In the north of the south island, there was one thing that we couldn't pass without visiting, which was - of course, duhuh - the Abel Tasman National Park. This park consists of tons of beautiful white-sanded beaches, lush foresty walks and comfortable DOC huts.
There are a few ways to get by in the park. You could walk, take a water taxi, go seakayaking,
or combine some of the methods. What a great adventure! Inge and me chose to do only a 2-day trip here, seeing as we would get a bit in trouble time wise to get to Picton (in order to catch the ferry to Wellington). First day we'd go sea-kayaking to Anchorage - unguided of course, adventurers that we are :-). Next day we'd do a one day hike to Onetahuti, where we'd be picked up by the water taxi to bring us back to the starting point.
So first day, there we are, getting the safety briefing and learning that we're the only ones heading out for a trip through the 'mad mile'. But ok, we're Belgians, we can handle it, we've been rafting for heaven's sake. We start the trip, fully confident, and notice immediately when stepping into the water that it's swarming with jellyfish. 'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, they sting', Joel (the kayak instructor) said. 'Have a good trip!' We swallow
deeply and get in the boat. It's ok, we can still handle it ... Just keep your hands out of the water. While you paddle. No biggy.
'There won't be so much wind today, don't worry', Joel said as well. But when we're about 20 metres offshore, the winds starts blowing. The boat starts rocking. Waves go higher. Jellyfish wobble by. Hmmm. Getting some doubts now. But, if in doubt, 'paddle harder', Joel said, 'and don't worry, your sprayskirt will keep you dry!' Ha-ha-ha, I say to that. About 15 minutes after take-off, we were both soaked, freezing (because of the wind) and trying not to topple over. So when we got to Watering Cove (one of the amazing small, gold beaches), we pulled the kayak ashore and decided after 5 minutes and a talk with another kayak instructor, not to enter the mad mile anymore. Which appeared to be a good decision because instead of calming down, the wind grew stronger in the afternoon.
So we continued to walk to Anchorage and after half an hour we got there. The beach is so sheltered that there was hardly any wind, and the sun was really burning, so we had our first real 'holiday-do-nothing' experience, yay! The next day, we continued the walk to Onetahuti, for which we had to get up early enough to catch the low tide (isn't it cool to do walks in which you have to account things like low tides and stuff? :-)) and which was beautiful. Another extremely sunny day, even a small tan on the legs - because yes, finally time to get the shorts out! After the walk we just had to wait at Onetahuti beach for the water taxi to pick us up. Easy peasy, trip was over we had survived our first overnight experience into the wild - and we liked it!
The next days we only had to drive (with a few stops in between of course) to get to Picton, where we booked the ferry to Wellington for Thursday. Although we didn't see any dolphins from the observation deck - the weather had once again turned crap and it wasn't nice out - we did have cows on board... In a cattle truck of course.
In Wellington (Welly, for the friends) we got greeted by heavy rain showers and dark clouds, olé. So we booked our last camping and stayed inside all night, reading and packing our bags.
On Friday we had to say goodbye to Tony ... Which was a pretty sad business since we had driven him around over 4693 km, oh yeah. That kind of counts for friendship, I think!
The next days we explored the city a little bit. It's quite a nice city, i can imagine, when the sun would be out. But the sun wasn't out and there was only wind and often rain. So we tried to keep indoors every once and a while, like when visiting Te Papa, New Zealand's impressive national museum (we saw the only colossal squid on display in the world here, and trust me, it's colossal!) On Saturday night we were joined by Alex, the before mentioned travel partner for the North Island, who took us to some nice cocktail place, called Motel.
Sunday was another parting day ... Inge stayed in Welly in search of a job, whereas Alex and me would head off to Taupo for the Tongariro National Park. Another sad business, other ways parting ... But we both took a good big swallow and each headed our own way.
I'm sure Inge will do fine in her job hunt and on her further trip and hey, we still meet again in the land of Oz! Here's to Inge and a magnificent, wonderful five weeks together. Cheers!