Sea Kajaking

Once we had crossed the cook straight between the North and South Island and arrived in Picton, we went straight to Motueka, which is a tiny town right next to the Abel Tasman National Park. This region is - although a lot further south - nearly as warm and sunny as the bay of plenty - at least in the summer. It has beautiful sandy beaches and is a perfect destination to do any outdoor sport. There are seals and sometimes dolphins in the water and a fern forest on land to explore.

As it consists of lots of little bays, the water is a lot calmer than at the rest of the coastline and therefore perfect for any sea-kayaking newbies like us!
However it is still the open sea, so we booked a half day trip kayaking to the split apple (bear with me and you will see why it is called like that) and hiking back on land in the afternoon.

We went in the 2-seater-kayak and soon we paddled along the bays over cristall clear water and near golden sandy beaches. This part of New Zealand has the most sun hours in the year, so the weather was of course gorgeous!

And of course you guessed it! This is the split apple!

Hiking back through the forest, rewarded us wth images like this:

It was quite a day, so a nice cool shanty in the end was really nice