Southern Exposure Sea Kayaking

By Chuck Beauzay
Abel -Tasman, New Zealand

My group of friends went sea kayaking in Abel-Tasman National Park in New Zealand. We got up early again (so much for sleeping in on vacation) and caught the shuttle from Southern Exposure Kayak. The compay picked us up at our hotel in Nelson and shuttle bus driver, Wavy Dave (I think this guy likes his job), drove back through Motueka to Marahau. We geared up with cool raingear and life jackets and took the shuttle down to the ocean where they launched our water taxi with a tractor (at low tides). The water taxi ride was about 45 minutes up to Tonga Bay. It was very windy! We paddled out to Tonga Island, barely skirting through some huge ass rocks sticking out of the water (I must say, Di and I did some fancy paddling there – as did Karen and Sally in their tandem kayak), and around the island to the leeward side (much calmer), but we only saw a couple of seals and one seal pup.

We paddled back to the mainland and south along the coast stopping at a few secluded beaches along the way for snacks and lunch. It was kind of chilly at times, but the sun came out off and on. The scenery was pretty cool and we hiked up a river a little ways at one beach. Karen and Sal (and a couple other people) held on to the sail as all the kayaks rafted up and sailed along at a good clip for a while. We continued paddling to the Anchorage at Torrent Bay. There were a lot of kayakers and other people hiking the trails in Abel-Tasman N.P. We took the water taxi (a fairly large boat with a 200 h.p. outboard) back to Marahau. We had to wait a while for Wavy Dave, so we chilled out and had a few beers and enjoyed the sun and scenery. On a side note: Wavy Dave stopped at a bakery for us earlier this morning – he was also picking up muffins and sandwiches for all the kayakers’ lunches. He set the big box full of sandwiches on a table outside the bakery and it tipped over spilling the sandwiches on the sidewalk. Most of them were o.k., but we had to wait a few minutes for the bakery to make some more. It was all very humorous! Price was around $250 NZ and can be booked through any of the visitor information centers.