Abel tasmin travel blog

one of our fellow travelers on the 3 day kayaking trip was a gentleman named Carlos, from Spain. he quit his job 10 years ago, and since has traveled 6 months a year, supporting himself by keeping up a travel information web site. he took some amazing pictures on our trip! check out the links below...

his web site:

http://www.vagamundos.net/

direct link to the Abel tasmin photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaga_mundos/sets/72157623436456904

Sent from my iPhone

couldn't help ourselves

after our amazing beach experiences of the day, we stopped off in
takaka on the way back down and sampled some of the locals green
lipped muscles. they were huge, and heather was a wee bit yucked out,
but they were delicious!! yum.

dinner was really yummy, but the service was sooooo slow. we had hoped
to stop for an hour, but ended up there fir over two hours wAiting and
waiting. drove south back over the mountain pass, and arrived at our
hostel after 11pm. luckily we had called ahead, and they left a key.

next up, continuing south, and white water rafting the bueller river
out if murchison. I am really curious to see the river town life down
here!

driving back down the coastline...

took in a few of the sights on the way back down the coastline. hat
you can't see in this picture is farewell spit off in the distance,
and the flocks of black swans feeding in the tidal flats (little black
dots on the horizon line). we tried to get some pics if the birds, but
they wanted no part of people anywhere near them, and camera didn't
zoom enough. spied them fir a bit using heathers binoculars.

hiked back through sheep covered pastures

break for a little snack

we finally sat Down for a few minutes to just soak it all in and eat
the little snacks we had packed ourselves. awhhhhh. the rock to the
left was the giant arch from the last picture, and the one on the
right had 2 arches (earlier picutre).

the picture.

finally managed to hit the right light and position to capture the
final rock arch in the bay. this is the view that lured heather to
this place! what is great is that it wasn't visible wher you first get
to the beach... you need to explore the entire thing to get in the
right position to see it! :)

black lines in the rocks... coal?

heather gustafson... help me out here?!

wishing we had a geologist with us to tell us about the rocks and history!

huge tunnels!

rock tunnels

we wandered through a bunch of tunnels cut into the rocks on the far
end of the beAch...

rock arch

caves in the cliffs

if you look to the left side of the right cave, there is a tiny spec
of a person walking out of the cave. yup. that big!

the high tide line for this beach also goes right up to the mout of
the cave. amazing how much is revealed at low tide.... and how little
you can wander at high tide!

wow!

more wonders as we walked...

sighting some rocks at the far end of the beach we wanted to check
out, we kept wandering. as we got around to the back side of the giant
rock islands, they revealed that they had giant arches cut out of
them. again, evey step we took down the beach revealed new treasures! :)

tidal life

sea stars (this is the only one I really saw anywhere), green lipped
muscles and giant sea snails.

blooming "sea cherry" thingies

some sort of anemome?

rocks full of sea life...

the rocks down in the tidal area were covered in sea life... Ton of
muscles and those little "cherry" looking nuggets that bloom under
water. anyone know what they are called?? see next pic for the bloom.

wading through the tide pools...

finally pulled ourselves away from the seals, and waded through the
tide pools.... the beach is only really accessible around low tide
(which we hit quite perfectly), and the rocks are covered in sea life!
love it.

mama minding the kiddie pool

it is really hard to see in this picture... but the mama was sitting
on the rocks playing referee for the little ones playing around. where
the sand meets the rocks in the middle of the pic there is a pool of
water. at any given time 6 or so pups were swimming around, jumping in
and out, crawling all over each other. cutest thing ever! couldn't
stop watching them took a ton of little videos on my camera I will
post when I get back to SF.

playing to the audience

everyone really was trying to stay a respectful distance from the
pups, but these little guys just kept sneaking up on the rocks in
front of us, and posing for the cameras.

seal pups everywhere!

we saw a small group of people, cameras clicking away. when made it to
that section if the beach, we realized they had come upon a whole
mess of seal pups. up on the rocks, trying to keep our distance, the
little guys were super flirty and playful... were having a blast
playong with each other, checking out the people and putting in quite
a show. we really tried to stay out of the way, but there were at
least 10-12 of them in this area (with one mom keeping her eye on
them, and barking orders every now and then), and 3 or 4 kept passing
within feet of us.

wandering, constantly taking pictures!

the most amazing thing about this beach was that every time we thought
we found the perfect angle for a picture... 2 feet away there was
something even more stunning to be photographed. we both took a
zillion pics. as mentioned before, the light was a bit tricky for the
iPhone pics, but don't worry, i filled a memory card on my "real"
camera. just have to wait till I get home to post them.

I heart beaches.

stunned by the beauty, ready to explore...

beach reavealed... pictures don't begin to capture it!

we came over the dunes, and finally got a clear view of the beach, and
we were both simply stunned. rolling sand dunes lead down to the
coastline littered with GIANT rock islands. the little rock in the
water off the point is probably the size of seal rock at ocean beach
in SF. there were a good number of people on the beach 50+ maybe, but
because of the sheer size, it felt deserted.

short hike out to the coast through sheep covered hills

made it to the top... fork in the road, take a left.

made it to the top of the island, with much persistence, and managing
to resist many stops along the way. we had to return in same
direction, so always a chance to stop on way back!

end of the road, dirt in born directions. took a left turn, and
followed the signs to wharariki beach. right turn would have taken us
to the edge of farewell spit (thin landmass hooking around to form the
very edge if the island).

up and over the mountains.

the road took us up and over big mountain pass, esesntially circling
the boundaries of Abel tasmin park.

the little island in the distance was one of placed we explored in the
kayaks, and spent one of the nights at a campground in the bay. gun to
get a good look at the coastline from above.

it was a nice mild day, but slightly overcast with dull light... which
didn't agree with the iPhone camera so much.

getting ourselves set up for road tripping

we made several stops early on to load ourselves up with road trip
gear (little cooler, cutting board, etc), and groceries. found auttle
park on the outside of town to make our frost road picinic lunch, and
get sorted. the day was progressing a bit slower than planned, but all
necessary stops.

finally we hit the road to journey to the top of the south island.
heather had a lead on a spectacular beach at the tip of the island,
and we were determined to make an adventure of finding it.

the driving adventure begins!

we spent the morning at the hostel repackung our bags with clean
laundry and resorting our stuff for the car part of the adventure.

we arranged a duper shuttle to pick us up and take us to the car
rental place back at the airport. since we were not pressed for time,
the driver detoured up and around the hills, and gave us quite a local
tour of Nelson. a much bigger city than either of us expected. pretty
gorgeous views from the top of the hills. 180 degrees of coastline,
and 180 degrees of mountainous hills. skies were clear enough to see
back to Abel tasmin, and the mountains beyond to the north that we
were set to explore.

heather took the wheel driving out of town, and I took on co-pilot
duties. mainly comprised of repeating the mantra "stay left, stay
left", and navigating through the many roundabouts.