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<\/a>On Wednesday morning we packed the tent and the remainder of its contents into the car then headed off into town to pick up some rolls for breakfast and evening meal. I had had my hopes on a big breakfast but Helen had persuaded me down to something that would fall short of our calorie burn for the day (is she saying I’m fat?).\n<\/p>\nWe drove over to Marahau to catch the 10:30 water taxi into the park. I knew from the map that the water taxi office \/ car park was not quite on the shore but I was surprised to find out we were loaded onto the water taxi in the lot before being taken to the see towed by a tractor. It ended up being a bit of a fun start to the trip.\n<\/p>\n
After dropping some folks off at a beach we were then shown some seals sunning themselves on a nearby island.\n<\/p>\n The whole area was quite stunning. The coastline was made of fractured granite which gave rise to sandy beaches and shallows. Apart from the coldness of the water we were reminded of many of the coastal scenes we have been lucky enough to see in our voyages across the Pacific.\n<\/p>\n We were eventually dropped off, two hours after departure, at our hike starting point, Awaroa. The path from here was nice but a little samey compared to a number we have been on before including here in New Zealand. We made good time to our campsite at Bark Bay arriving there around 3pm.\n<\/p>\n Back at the tent we found ourselves being bitten to death by sand flies and realized we’d also forgotten to bring fly repellant. We hid ourselves in the tent and tried to pass the time with I-Spy and 20 Questions. I was glad when it reached 5pm and we could eat. We exited the tent and ate our food while the flies ate us.\n<\/p>\n After finishing our food we felt quite tired and retired for a very early nights rest. I don’t think either of us slept too well in the cramped tent so we needed the extra time to get a full nights rest.\n<\/p>\n<\/a>The water taxi ended up being a little bit of a tour. We first spent some time following a Hector Dolphin which was described to us as very being rare in the area. We were next taken to see a granite rock in the sea which had sometime in the past eons split down the middle.\n<\/p>\n<\/a>We soon had the tent up and realized we hadn’t brought anything to do. We walked around for a while bumping into Matt and Sue who were holidaying with their son on a small sailboat. Like many we’d seen they had come into the lagoon at high tide, drawn up their keel and would soon be sitting on the sand once the tide had gone out.\n<\/p>\n