Nelson

First off, I would like to say that there will be no pictures of this trip. I made sure to charge my camera battery before I left, but apparently I did it wrong and drained the battery instead of charging it. This was really frustrating as there were a ton of great things to photo throughout the weekend.

I was apprehensive about the whole trip as it was solo and I had no phone. I ended up using Sam's old one, which turned out to be a necessity. I had pre-booked a super shuttle to pick me up at 4:30am so that I could make the plane on time, but they ended up not showing up, and as I had not left myself a very large margin for error time-wise, I ended up hailing a cab and paying way more that I should have to get to the airport. I never found out what happened to the super shuttle.

I arrived in Nelson early and the host of hostel I was staying at, The Bug, came to pick me up in an old time VW bug, it was pretty cool. Went to the Isite and booked a trip to Abel Tasman for the next two days and spent the rest of the morning looking for something to do in Nelson. It is a quiet town, reminded me a lot of Bozeman or even Jackson Hole minus the ski hills. I ended up renting a car, a manual, and heading out to the Motueka river to do some fly fishing. the
water was frigid and I ended up not getting so much as a bite. But I did have a good time and enjoyed myself in the fishing. I had a little run in with the car. Having the extra foot and hand to think about was a bit much for me and I ended up turning onto the wrong side of the street. I couldn't figure out how to put the car in reverse (there was a ring around the stick that you had to lift that I didn't know about) so I pulled into a car park and called the rental place. I was so pleased that got it all figured out that I didn't think as I was pulling out of the park lot and I went into the wrong lane. It just happened once, and on a deserted street no less, no one was coming but there were some guys working construction on the side of the road who swore at me. The whole incident got me pretty nervous about driving and it was kinda stressful for the rest of the day. I got back ok though, no accidents or anything. The next morning I turned the car in and got on the bus for Abel Tasman.


Took the water taxi to Tonga and walked to the Anchorage hut for the night, it was a 4ish hour hike along really nice easy terrain, I did most of it in my jandals. The aquataxi took us around and showed us some stuff that I would have taken pictures of if my camera had any batteries. This included a marine reserve and some seals swimming around in the area. I rode the aquataxi with a number of older people, five of whom comprised the bulk of the Nelson city tramping club. I ended up falling in with them for the day and I was instructed on most of the native flora and fauna by one of those older, izzoine gentlemen, the kind who know everything about where ever they happen to be at the moment, and I did learn a lot. We separated as when they arrived at the hut they were staying in, and I continued to the next one. I chose to take the path labeled "low tide track" and was almost in over my head, the bottom was
nice and muddy and I almost lost my jandals and ended up having to strip my jeans off so that they wouldn't get wet as I forded the estuary. After that the track had some steep hills but nothing bad, it was a pretty easy hike all in all. There was one other are that claimed to be a low tide crossing, and I tried to make that, but after just about getting trapped by the tide out in the mud flats, I ended up going around the long way. A warning to anyone doing that tramp: the tide comes in very fast, it's not a good idea to try to risk it. I arrived at the hut just before dark, threw my bag on a bed, drank my wine and ate dinner. I went to sleep pretty early and got up pretty late. I was one of the last out of the hut, but I had a 4 hour hike and 7ish hours to do it in. I ended up hiking nice and easy and getting out about half an hour before the bus came to pick me up. I ended up getting off the trail just before the end and onto a beach, the tide was out at this point and there were sand dollars, cushion stars, and mussels all over the place. The sand dollars were all covered by a little sand, but you could easily find them as the sand covering them had the standard five pointed star-shape-pattern that they all have on their backs.

I checked into the hostel called "accents on the park" that night as the bug was full. There happened to be a huge international fiddle music weekend going on in nelson that weekend and most of the musicians were staying at the same hostel. I went down to the pub in the basement and listened to great Irish music for a half an hour, met a kiwi girl who was pretty cute but it turned out she was kinda young. Then all of the sudden everyone emptied out of the pub and it was practically just me and the bartender. He said that there was the big concert of the weekend going on then, but I probably wouldn't be able to get a ticket as they had been sold out for a couple weeks. He ended up giving me his, which he got for free as a complimentary thing for housing so many of the musicians, but since he was on shift he wouldn't be able to make it. The concert was great, there was a couple locals playing, who were pretty good, then a group from Australia and finally a guy and girl from Ireland, native Gaelic speakers both and that was pretty much amazing. After the concert they all went to the local pub and played until like four in the morning. The next day I bummed around Nelson and ended up at a pub that afternoon listening to them jam some more. It was quite annoying that I didn't have my fiddle to play with them, but what can you do? Slept at the bug that night and flew back the next morning.