Ramble
Quest - Gardens of Nelson.
After a few hours of walking around Nelson I wished that my bus had been delayed here instead of at Picton. The Picton buses link with the ferry, so when the boat is late, as they have been recently, everyone waits. Picton may have a lovely setting, but there's not much to do there. Nelson is a bigger town with more shops and amenities, but just walking around looking at people's gardens (especially near the river) is a treat.
Some of the public gardens are great as well, most notibly the Queen's Garden. Between there and the walk up to the "Centre of New Zealand" lookout I saw some exceptional trees, conveniently labelled: Buyna Buyna Pine, Jacaranda, Dawn Redwood, London Plane.
The Nelson YHA gets either raves for its cleanliness or complaints about its stern staff and sterile environment. All true, but you can get what you need here and it is efficiently managed. I say thumb's up.
Originally I was thinking of heading south after the Queen Charlotte Track, but I started hearing from people that the Abel Tasman Coastal Track wasn't nearly as crowded as I'd feared. A quick survey of people around the hostel showed that while almost all of them planned to go to AT Park, they were all just going for the day or to sea kayak. Hmm, I'm going back in to the bush!
One thing I started to notice in Nelson that held true for the rest of the trip was that there's lots of Americans in the South Island! This was quite a surprise to me as I'd hardly run into any during my swing through SE Asia and in the North Island. For some reason they have the (false INHO) belief that the South Island is much better than the North.