May 2

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Well, it rained all night…and by rain, I mean the hardest hitting wet stuff on the tin roof ever. I thought in my quasi sleep as I was coming in and out of dreams that the house was going to slip off the mountain. The house didn’t fall off but, man alive, was it a lot of rain!

By 7:30 in the morning when the alarms started going off, the sun was out and bright and shiny. Awesome. Josh and I got ready following the printed off check list I found from the Abel Tasman Kayak company online. T shirt, warm shirt, shoes to get wet, shoes to walk/hike in, swimming suit, towel, etc. Basically, a lot of gear.

We finished off the last of the doughnuts we’d bought and Josh washed up two apples to take as a snack. I grabbed the bananas to have for breakfast and we were off by 8:25 or so and we’d wanted to leave at 8:30 at the latest. So, we were good.

Down the mountain. Down Swamp Road…a different Swamp Road out of Brooklyn area. Then, although we had thought it was correct to turn right and get into the town of Riwaka…it turned out that we were wrong. We were driving past an elementary school and came to another road that thankfully said NO EXIT. That’s how we figured out we were going the wrong way and that where we had turned right at on the road we really should have turned left.

So, we backtracked keeping an eye on the clock thinking it was going to be close for our making the 9:15 departure time. We saw the signs for Marahau (our departure town) and took a shorter mountain pass to reach the town than the pass we drove through yesterday. That was a good thing.

We found Marahau but not ATK. At least not on our first pass through town. ATK is actually outside of town 100 meters past the end of the beach. We did find it, however, and we still arrived 5 minutes early. There were people getting set up in all their gear in front of us while we parked and got our stuff situated.

When we went to check in at the counter, the girl said we’d been upgraded. I was not happy. Unlike getting an upgrade on a flight, which you know means business or first class, you don’t know what your “upgrade” is going to consist of on a tour like this. So, I gave the girl and unpleasant look I’m sure and said, “I guess we have no choice.”

She explained that our original tour only covered this small area (showing us on a map). With our upgrade, we got to take a water taxi out to a different bay and see “better” stuff like Seal Island. Josh asked if there was more kayaking involved or anything but there wasn’t (and really, what choice did we have as we’d already paid?)

We had to wait for the bus to drop off the other two people who were coming on the tour with us. While we waited, we picked out some water shoes to wear and some thermal tops. Our kayak guide Ryu (Japanese immigrant who came to NZ about 10 years ago) showed us on a map our “upgraded” trip reminding us that we’d paid $105 for our experience and the trip we were getting to take was valued at $170. Ryu also said the shuttle bus was notorious for running late. Great…and, as predicted, late it was.

By the time our two other kayakers, a Japanese tourist couple, it was already after 10:00. We loaded up all our gear into a “water taxi” which was really a big catamaran and off we went down the road to the beach being pulled by a farming tractor. There were about 12 other people onboard the water taxi and most of them seemed to be taking the boat as a shuttle between different bases so they could hike. There we a couple of loud talkers who went on about all they’d seen and done while traveling in NZ.

We backed the boat into the water and off we went over large swells…it was mostly fun and not overly nausea inducing like the mountain road yesterday. We were dropped off at Torrent Bay, our guide and the four of us. Everyone else was going on to different beaches to be dropped off. We helped unload all the gear from the water taxi and then we were standing on the shore ready to learn about how to kayak.

But first, the guide had to show us where the toilet was. Then, we had to learn about the different kayak hatches and all the safety precautions… a “Lovely Johnny” is the loop shaped cord that you want to grab hold of to release you from the kayak if you capsize…good thing to know. Next, we had to learn how to put all our gear on…like a spray skirt, jacket, life vest, hat. Okay, now we had to learn how to paddle correctly while on the land. And I have no coordination.

Not to mention, all the while, we are being EATEN ALIVE to the point of bleeding by little sand fleas and mosquitos!

Can we finally get going? It’s lunch time (noon) and we hadn’t had tea or even put the kayaks into the water yet and our day was ending around 3:30. Ryu gave us a couple of chocolate/peanut butter cookie things which despite my hate for peanut butter I devoured.

So after further instruction on how to properly leave the beach, we kayak out, easily enough and no worries. We head out past a rocky island just fine. Then we learned some more signals like “raft up” and “stop.” The guide intermittently spoke English and Japanese.

We decided to go forward to Seal Island to see some seals, however, about 5 minutes later, we saw two seals on a rock jutting out into the sea and that would have to do for us. The tour guide told us that the Japanese tourists couldn’t go on and I’m sure he told them, yeah, the Americans can’t go on. In truth, Josh and I were holding up quite well and Josh was really giving the paddling the what for and I told him I was proud of him for doing a great job. Ryu paddled closer to the rocks and the seals to take some pictures for us and we talked to Fumiko and Hiroshi.

So, we turn around and head straight ahead for a place called Anchorage Bay or something like that. We made it there without a problem since the waves were pushing us in the right direction and the wind was helping us out too. The scenery was great, however, we don’t really feel like we saw that much. As it turned out, the Anchorage place was our lunch stop and our only stop before returning to Torrent Bay to be picked up by the water taxi.

As we landed on the beach, I got out first and then Josh got out. Well, Josh tried to get out. Josh’s leg had fallen asleep while he’d been crammed up in the kayak (Ryu had even made Josh practice seeing if he could fit in a standard kayak before our departure from the ATK base that morning). So, because Josh’s leg had fallen asleep, when he stepped out of the kayak and onto the land, he fell down in the water!

Josh was okay and no worse for the wear except he was pretty wet now. We helped unload the lunch supplies and my thoughts of having lunch on the beach were dashed when Ryu kept walking up into the forest to a hut to prepare lunch there. We hung out things to dry and took photos while lunch was being prepared.

When lunch was ready, we had pumpkin soup, a roll, one fatty beef kabob, one pita bread sliced, salad to fill the pita, an orange, and a cookie. We had some juice, tea or coffee to drink. Overall, an underwhelming lunch for something that was billed online as “substantial.” Not even close to the Australian rainforest tour lunch and tea that was provided. This was just sub-par although it didn’t all taste that bad.

We made conversation about Japan and New Zealand as we were the only other nationality and the others were Japanese. After Ryu cleaned up lunch, we were ready to head out at 2:30 to return to Torrent Bay. The tide was out at this point which made viewing the shoreline neat because it was different. We made it back into the water without any problems and it was maybe a 15-20 minute paddle at most to Torrent Bay where we began kayaking only a couple of hours ago (and by a couple of hours ago I’m including our lunch break).

Because the tide was out, we had to carry the kayaks in to the shore. This was a big chore! We were slogging through the sinking wet sand and it was all just unpleasant. When the water taxi arrived to pick us up, we had to carry our personal gear out slogging through the sand to meet it. Then, as it was full of other people, we had to push our way up to the front seats.

Water taxi back to the shore, Josh and I both having an enormous feeling of what a waste today was. The tractor met us at the shore to pull us back up to land and take us to the ATK office. A fellow passenger asked how long we got to kayak and we said 1.5 hours and she said they’d kayaked for 3 and walked. I through in the part about the seals and she said they saw the seals from the water taxi. Guess we lost on that one.

We cleaned up the gear and exchanged emails with the Japanese tourists to send them pictures of the seals that Ryu had taken with our camera. As Ryu pointed out, they had a really nice camera, so I would like to get the pics that they took in general just in case they’re better than ours.

Then, after saying bye and shaking Ryu’s hand, we left. And good riddance too. Because once in the car we both let loose on how disappointing overall this trip had been. We both felt like we’d put in a lot of effort learning everything and getting in and out of the water with the kayaks and all that and there was no reward of getting to kayak a long time. We were only in the water for 1.5 hours at most!

Josh and I realize we are NOT athletic at all (remember the Tongariro Crossing?) but the Japanese tourist kept saying how good we were…and they did almost capsize/veer out to sea several times…anyway, all this to say that we don’t generally ask to do MORE of an activity but we feel like what we did essentially amounted to nothing. We certainly didn’t feel UPGRADED, heck, we don’t even think we got our money’s worth for what we paid. And anyway, I paid to do what I wanted to do not necessarily because it was the cheapest thing but because it sounded best to us.

Josh didn’t like the fact that there was little to no commentary/tour guide aspect of the trip either.

So, we complained like this all the way back to the cottage. Then, we took a hot shower. My shower was so relaxing and I told myself I didn’t have to get out until I was ready and I could relax and enjoy the ocean view because this is why I worked at Vision Manawatu and now I can RELAX until all the hot water is gone if I wanted.

Josh ran down to the owners house to settle up the payment and get more tea, coffee and sugar. Josh also talked Paul, the owner, to come up here to build us a fire as that was proving challenging for Josh.

The full moon was out big and bright and reflecting in the ocean below. Simply amazing view. Paul came up with a tub full of fire supplies and set us up right. They’ve only started having visitors to the cottage since December. I typed up the journal, Josh read Harry Potter and then we had some dinner of grilled ham and cheese (only one cheese slice each tonight to put some cheese in the eggs tomorrow).

Dinner was good and we ate more of the “mousse” ice cream for dessert. We were both happy with the way the food budget is looking thus far although it will go up as we are not set to have a kitchen in all the places we are staying at.

I’m not exhausted tired like how you might feel if you don’t get enough sleep the night before. I’m dreamy, floaty kind of tired if that makes sense…kinda like drifting out on the waves feeling mixed with sleep. It’s 8:35 or so right now but I’ll probably go lie in bed and read and fall to sleep soon.

Tomorrow’s plan of driving to St. Arnaud for a look around the Nelson Lakes area may be off as Josh and I just like being in our nice cottage and hanging out here together. We’ll see.

It’s so pleasant to have a warm, warm fire and not be freezing cold. Even in Palmerston North, the little oil heater doesn’t warm us up this much and I’m enjoying being really warm and cozy for what seems like the first time in a long time!