Abel Tasman National Park, Wellington, Ohakune, Taupo.

Again, been a while since last update, in North Island since 28th, and today up in Taupo for a few nites.

Abel Tasman National Park was our last stop on South Island, and the long trip up to it was really worth it. stayed 3 nites there, one of the days we spent sea-kayaking all day, Sinead and myself in the one kayak, it had its own rudder and all, which I was controlling from small foot-pedals in back, was really cool, only us and another girl with our guide, so the small group meant we could go exploring more stuff around park. Tricky to get navigation right at first, I thought one of us might throw the other overboard!

Along with the sea-kayaking, the park is famous for its walks. You can get an aqua-taxi as there called, to one of the bays, walk for as long as u want to another bay and get another aqua taxi back to where u started. We did a 4hr walk which was enough for us, some gang were walking with full backpacks on, tents, cooking equipment and stuff, as there are huts along track that u can stay overnite in, f**k that I said! Spent day after recovering from kayaking and walking, before heading to Piction to get the ferry, not much to Picton, had a game of mini-golf, good fish n' chips there though.

Ferry across to Wellington was real dodgy, and felt sea-sick for most of it, glad to get onto dry land at end, some shock to get into a bigger city agian though, driving on motorways, whereas it was country roads the day before! Not too impressed with wellington though, nice enough around docklands area, went to the National Museum as it was free, and did the other touristy thing that is the cable car ride up to the Botanic gardens and walking back down to city again.

From Wellington, we drove to Ohakune, around a 4hr drive, glad to get out of city to be honest. Ohakune is on outskirts of the Tongariro National Park, which has a couple of active volcanoes in it. A famous walking track in New Zealand is the Tongariro Crossing, which is around 7hrs(18.5km), walking upto and around craters of Mt Tongariro. Weather was good for last few days so I walked the track on Thursday. Its not a loop track so you have to get a bus to drive you to the start and pick you up at end. Only prob day I did it was a lot of cloud early in the morning, which didn't really lift. Was tough going, especially the two climbing parts that lead up to the Red Crater, made good time going up though so had time to climb to the top of Mt Tongariro itself, about 1950m. Visibility was really bad though when I got up there, cloud comes in and out so fast, on way back down I lost the track, until I saw a couple of walkers a couple metres below me! Walk was really good though, though long and was wrecked at end!

All for now folks,
Kevin