Greymouth, Barrytown and glaciers Franz Josef and Fox

Since we had quite a busy and strenous days at Abel Tasman track, we chose to chill out for a bit in a small town of Greymouth on the west coast of the South island. The weather has been quite ideal for this type of activity for the last couple of days, rain rain rain, so we settled by the Sky Movies channel and relaxed. What can I tell you, it was very much needed after all this time camping around and eating canned food :).

After our recoup, we headed a few kilometers north of Greymouth to a small cozy village of Barrytown. One of the local kiwi families has thought of a great business venture. They run a hands on workshop on how to make a knife starting at the fire and hammer all the way to a nicely sharp and polished product that is yours to keep. The full day of knife making craftsmanship was a tremendous success in our eyes and definitely worth the money (about 60 euro) as the knives are worth more than that since they are hand made and not to speak of the sentimental value. Just check out the prototypes in about half way through the process during the day on the image. I'd rate this experience amongst the best so far on our almost 5 month trip now. Damn, the time flies.

When we were equipped with sharp knives in our backpacks, the next destination were the well known glaciers of Franz Josef and Fox. Funny thing is that the Fox glacier was renamed from the Maori name "Te Moeka o Tuawe" by Sir William Fox who visited it one day and decided to rename it (why can't people just leave stuff as is, the glacier already had a name :)). Anywho, the scenery here is just amazing. There are a tons of guided tour operators that will take you on the actual glacier itself, however, for the prices they were advertising it is really not worth it. You can get for free all the way to the foot of the glacier, so one can definitely get a good view of the massive chunk of ice with a river running below it.

Abel Tasman adventure

Nelson region is known for its sunshine and apple orchards. However, we spent most of our Nelson time listening to rain falling on our tent. We also encountered a new animal, a sandfly (we refer to them as 'bitches'). These tiny harmless-looking buggers give you a nasty bite which will itch for a week, forming awful red bumps all over the skin. They are highly intelligent too, as they seem to know how to find that 1 centimeter area of skin where repellent has not been applied to and start their feast! So people - It seems that we are dealing with some kind of a devil fly, the superhero of all mosquitos.

Originally the plan was to stay in the area for a good few weeks, me working away in one of the apple orchards and making us filthy rich. However, after a considerable amount of phone calls it became quite evident that my timing sucks and currently all the positions have been filled. I wasn't too devastated by the fact though, especially when I heard how bad the money actually is. Maybe I will work later somewhere else, or maybe we just stick to canned meat and forget about it:) Anyway, we decided to head up towards Abel Tasman National Park to do some hiking and kayaking.

Abel Tasman track is a fairly popular 51 km hike, which normally takes about 3-4 days to hike. We decided to combine kayaking with hiking and spend 2 days in the area. The track is known for sandy beaches, rainforests and tides, so you must plan your walks carefully and take your shoes off a few times.

The weather was sunny as we started kayaking from Marahau to Bark Bay. However, we were slightly worried about our timetable; we got our kayak an hour later than we were told, and we only had about 4 hours to complete quite a strenuous route. The kayak company also showed no mercy, the kayak had better be in Bark Bay by 3 p.m or they would charge us an extra fee. So off we went, paddling like some olympic champions. I suppose the idea is to paddle fairly slowly and admire the bays, birds and seals along the way...perhaps have a picnic lunch and go for a swim... However, we only took one 15 minute break and passed one seal colony, the rest of the time we were fighting the waves and grunting. Seriously tough work!

We camped in a lovely beach right next to Bark Bay and slept like a baby. The next morning we started our hike towards Awaroa Bay, where we would get a watertaxi back to Marahau that afternoon. We passed some amazing beaches with white sand and plunged into rainforests in between. We heard that normally one can see dolphins and stingrays swimming in the warm bays, but we were not that lucky this time. However, the water taxi took us to see a seal colony nearby. It was quite unique, I have never seen anything like that! There were only females with their 3 month old pups, apparently the males only visit the area in November for some...erm...'seal luuuurrrve'.