This morning, we packed up camp and headed one town south to Kaiteriteri to take a cruise of Abel Tasman park. We had planned to kayak, but it was a quite windy day, and at this point Eli was still sick, so we didn’t want to chance it. So we hung out on the beach in the morning (wearing appropriate sunscreen… the sun is MUCH more intense here than it ever is back home). There were construction guys moving sand from one end of the beach to the other. Alex would have loved it! We got some fun shells, and had a delicious lunch at a local cafe (we ended up having HAM paninis instead of LAMB paninis, because of our difficult American accent, but they were still good!).

Our boat tour of the park was a good idea; it was super-breezy on the water, and we were thankful to be on a larger boat. We had great views of the golden-sand beaches, mountains, rock formations, and all the other beautiful things that the coast had to offer. We also saw some fur seals playing in the water around one of the islands (there were lots of islands, from small single boulders to pretty sizeable ones).

We were still in the harbor when I took this pic of Eli, so it hadn’t gotten rough and windy yet!

It had gotten a little windier when Eli took the pic of me. My wonderful floppy jungle hat from my Florida trip wasn’t quite the appropriate headwear for such a windy day (it spent most of the day covering my eyes or blown back onto my head), but someone was wearing my baseball hat!

Here’s one of our pictures of the beautiful coast. The water is a clean-looking teal-blue, and the shoreline alternates beautiful sandy beaches with really interesting giant rocks. It was a good cruise!

After the cruise we were going to try to drive to Greymouth. Well, I was trying to drive while Mel snoozed in the passenger seat. (These antibiotics are making Mel sleepy). We made it as far as Murchison, where we stopped for dinner at a small cafe. The plan was to continue on, but the fine New Zealand wine and cooking put a halt to that plan 🙂 We made it down the street after dinner, and stayed at the local holiday park. Mel couldn’t get the doorknobs to function properly… it was hilarious. We had a lovely night’s snooze to prepare us for the rest of the driving to the glacier tomorrow.