Despite the weather, the trip was really good fun. Being lazy, I decided to go on a fully catered trip and have someone else cook for me. It is truly amazing how much food you can fit into the storage compartments of sea kayaks, and the two guides that we had turned out to be masters at cooking in the outdoors. I reckon it was probably the best (and healthiest) I have eaten since arriving in New Zealand!
On the first day (Saturday) we paddled quite a way into the park, and set up a camp at a place called Bark Bay. This proved to be a good place to camp, as it is one of the few spots in the park where you can have a campfire, which proved to be vital to drying us out and warming us up! That afternoon, we went for a paddle (in the rain!) up one of the rivers that run into the bay, where the guides confirmed their insanity by both jumping off a ridiculously high swing bridge into some very shallow water. Somehow they both survived to cook our dinner!
On Sunday it rained all day, but we went kayaking anyway! We went a bit further into the park and paddled around Tonga Island which is a well known seal colony - they didn't seem to be minding the rain quite as much as us. Later that afternoon, after we got back to camp, we went for a bit of a bushwalk to see some of the waterfalls in the area - due to the rain, the water was absolutely raging down them which was quite spectacular. It finally stopped raining on Monday, just in time for our arrival back at Marahau that afternoon!
I spent the next few days travelling down the west coast of the South Island, stopping for a couple of days at a tiny place called Punakaiki. There's not really a lot there except for wild, rugged coastal scenery and some bizarre "pancake rocks" - so called because somehow the sea and wind has eroded the rock to make a look like piles of stacked up pancakes. I was lucky with the weather, as the west coast is supposed to be really wet, but today (Saturday) was the only day where it actually rained. I'm staying in Greymouth tonight, one of the larger towns on the west coast but still not particularly big, and am planning on going to the glaciers at Franz Josef and Fox next week. (For photos of the west coast click HERE.)
