As we left Blenheim we decided to drive the scenic route to Nelson. It would take a little longer and would be a little windier (as in, more turns in the road), but the views were meant to be beautiful over Queen Charlotte Sound. They were! We stopped often and took some photos and enjoyed the view. The whole drive was beautiful and we arrived in Nelson a little before lunch time after driving past the beautiful coastline. I had never seen the sea this amazing pale blue colour before. Trust me, the photos don’t do it justice.

Poor Simon! I had seen a sign on the way in to Nelson for a walk to the Centre of New Zealand. Now, I honestly didn’t think that the Centre of New Zealand would be right at the top of a hill, but it was. I mean, what were the chances of that? Turns out it’s not ‘officially’ the Centre of New Zealand, but is the centre of the middle region, Nelson. Good enough for us! We got to the top a little out of breath, but as always. The view was completely worth it.

We walked back down into the centre of the city and enjoyed a stone baked pizza from a street vendor. It was so unbelievably tasty and it got me back in the good books with the husband. We had to buy a new day backpack as mine had ripped, been repaired and ripped again. I don’t want to risk losing anything from the bag so we decided it was time to bite the bullet and buy a new one from Kathmandu. Other than that, we just strolled around Nelson and really enjoyed it. It reminded us of Wellington with it’s proximity to the sea and the structure of the city. Great place!

We carried on to Kaiteriteri, which is up near the Abel Tasman National Park. We had bumped into a few people who have told us that we HAVE to go stay in Kaiteriteri and as soon as we arrived we could tell why. The beach was beautiful, there were rolling forested hills in the background and you could see the coastline that we drove along earlier that day in the distance. The water was clear and blue and the sand was golden. It was definitely the most beautiful beach we had seen so far in New Zealand. Our holiday park was right on the beach and we settled in with a walk along the beach.

For the next day we had booked to go kayaking, cruising and seal watching. Our good old trusty website friend bookme.co.nz gave us an excellent discount for this all day activity so we were happy. The only way to access the coastline of Abel Tasman National Park is by boat or by walking the Abel Tasman 71km great walk. We only had a day and didn’t really feel like a massive walk so were glad that our package included our boat trip up to Anchorage.

We got up nice and early and saw that the sun was shining! We are very aware that we have been SO fortunate with the weather recently and are very grateful. Everything in New Zealand would still be as beautiful and breathtaking even if it was raining, but I’m not sure Simon would agree that I would be the best company if I was cold and wet. Always grateful to see the sun. We headed down to the beach to get ready for our first activity of the day – sea kayaking. Simon and I have kayaked quite a lot in the past and have sea kayaked in Devon. This was our first time kayaking with a ‘skirt’ though. We were taught how to release ourselves if we ended up capsized in the water and I reminded Simon that the only reason we would, would be if he made us! Simon was going to be in the back and he was introduced to a new way of steering, a rudder controlled by foot pedals. That was going to make my life far easier.

We headed off from Kaiteriteri beach and had a lovely kayak around to one of the marine reserve islands. We saw lots of gulls nesting and a huge amount of cormorants flying around. We carried on kayaking towards Split Apple Rock. Split Apple Rock is a rock formation that looks more like an avocado, in my opinion. It is believed that it originally had a core of quartz and over time weathering caused the rock to split straight down the middle leaving the formation that we see today. It was pretty impressive.

It was time for tea and biscuits on the beach and of course this meant it was a good time to do some jumping shots. The one of me has caused me to have a bit of a back ache for the last day or so… that is how committed I was to the shot. Mum, I promise I will be more careful. The tea was great and we got chatting to our kayak guide, John, who has the same camera as us. He taught us a few tips which is great.

Back in the kayak and it was time to back up into a cave that we could paddle through. Simon was loving life at this point and having a great time. We kayaked back the way we came and couldn’t believe that 2 and a half hours had passed already. We had a really great time! We do love kayaking and were thinking about getting one when we get home and settled into work again.

We had a little bit of time for lunch before our sea shuttle took us to Anchorage. I was pretty excited at this point as we would be going past Adele Island which has a colony of Southern Fur Seals. We were very lucky as we got to see about 5 on the way to Anchorage and about 5 again on the way back. YAY! They were mainly males as they were waiting around for the females to return from hunting. The females had recently had cubs and that means it’s time to get pregnant again.

We arrived in Anchorage and it was just paradise. It was very easy to forget that we were in New Zealand. We decided to do the 1.5hour Pitt Head Loop Walk with a girl called Laura that we met on board. She was living in Wellington, but from Glasgow originally. The walk took us to lots of beautiful lookouts and down onto a bay that was just stunning (I think i need to look in a thesaurus for some more words to describe how amazing these places are).

We made it back to the beach with about 30 minutes to spare before our boat took us back to Kaiteriteri beach, so we sat on the beach and relaxed. It was such a brilliant day and when we spoke to Laura about how she had booked it, we realised again how great bookme.co.nz is at getting you a discount.

That evening we enjoyed an icecream and settled in to watch some of ‘The Two Towers – Extended Edition’. We’ve been working our way through the Lord of the Rings movies again.