New Zealand – 12th Nov 2008 - Day 20

After a quick, home made breakfast, John popped down to reception to sign out booking in form. Don, the owner had us down of the three nights, as we had asked if it was OK to consider staying a third night if we wanted too. He announced that as far as he was concerned, we were saying three nights and if we did not, he would charge us for three anyway. John explained that the third night was an option, but he said that he would still charge us for the third night, which we did not want. John asked him to try and resell the third night if possible. He said it was an outside chance.

We were picked up at 8:50am by our Kayaking tour company, The Sea Kayaking Company (see: http://www.seakayaknz.co.nz/ ). After the standard safety check, we got into our two man Kayak and headed off. The sea was quite calm, so we crossed the bay to the first headland. Wow. What a row! It lasted about one hour of fast paced rowing. We crossed a few other bays and by the time we had reached our resting spot the clouds had faded away and the sun was peeping out.

We stopped at a small bay and dragged our kayaks onto the shore line. Our tour leader, Jane, brewed up some tea and coffee and offered us some great tasting cake.

After half an hour, we were back in the sea and heading towards our lunch stop. The sun was now out in full force, we rowed for another hour and a half, stopping to view some seals and bird life on the way.

We reached our lunch stop. A wonderful, empty, golden sanded bay, with clear waters and no wind.

We ate our lunch in the blazing sun with our fellow adventurers, thee German lads and a couple from Canada. After a while, John decided that this might be his only chance to swim in the sea, so in he went. It was very cold indeed, but he managed to swim for five minutes!

Drying off was another matter altogether. The walk to the top of the island helped. After a twenty minute walk we reached the top of our tiny island. The views from the top were amazing. This is the most beautiful part of NZ to date. Numerous, picture post card sandy bays, mountainous back drops and azure green sea. Wonderful!

We re packed the kayaks, dressed up in all our kit, took a few photo’s, and rowed to our final destination. However, as we approached the final bay, we all joined up in a raft formation and tied a sail to two ors and sailed our way into the bay. Fiona and one of the German lads held the sails bottom edge, whilst John and the Canadian girl held the sail high on their ors.

Once at the final bay, we awaited our water taxi back to our B&B resort. We had been actively Kayaking for over five hours. At times the sea was quite choppy, it was great fun. The Sea Taxi managed to load 9 kayaks and 8 people into the water taxi. Mad! Once back at our bay, the water taxi (See: http://www.aquataxi.co.nz/) , pulled the boat with all of us in it, up onto the quay with a tractor. The tractor then drove us all in the boat, back to the water taxi car park. It was certainly strange driving along the road, in a boat!

We arrived back at our B&B, only to find that Don had now sold our third night to someone else. Bad News! We had now decided to do a 6 hour hike, so needed the room!

We called into another B&B in the same town (next door). Luckily, they had a room free, so we booked it there and then.

We popped down to the local store, checked out some stuff on the internet, bought some food and returned to our Chalet. We took some stuff to the launderette and then sat on our veranda with a glass of wine and our dinner, crisps and dips!

We watched some TV and went to bed happy and tired. What a great day. Wonderful scenery, great weather and good company.