Nelson and the Abel Tasman Coastal Track

Our first week on the south island and despite nasty forecasts we ended up with sunny yet delightfully cool weather.
We spent our first day driving from Picton to Nelson. Nelson is a lovely town but we decided we really wanted to be "out in the bush" so we took the long windy mountainous dirt road up to French Pass. French Pass is up in the sounds right up at the north peak of the south island. The views are amazing stretching far out across the ocean over forest, then grazing land and forest again until you turn the corner at the far end. All of a sudden the ocean in front of you is studded with islands and sailboats and at the very end of the road a tiny settlement and a Department of Conservation camp site on the beach in a small cove. We were greeted by the husband of the sites keeper and his surprisingly familiar accent. He was a cute old ex-pat from Sunnyvail CA who after 20 years in Australia moved to this small "town" in New Zealand where he could sail his boat and his wife had a simple job that provided them with all the basic necessaties. Our site neighbors were living at the DOC camping grounds in a trailer and caught and gutted their own fish every evening, just in time for us to watch while we set up our tent. About half way int o cooking dinner we realized the whole area was filled with all these brown flightless birds with quite a curiosity for our stuff. It turns out that they were weka and if your not careful they get into your car, your tent, your food, anything, and that they will steal anything tasty or shiny. Cute.
The next night we headed up to the Abel Tasman. We spent the night at a campground at the end of the road by the trailhead and took a water taxi up to the top of the track in the morning. We started the day by hiking to mutton cove. It was one of the most amazing beach areas i have ever seen and far enough away from civilazation that no one was there except 3 other hikers taking a lunch break. As beautiful as cathedral cove but without all the people. From there we hiked down to Waiharekeke where we spent the night. We didnt have much of a choice really because the next portion of the trail was under water, a quarter of a mile of beach you can only cross at low tide and you can never cross without getting wet.
The campsite on a beach but so full of sandflies we had to stay practically in the smoke of the fire to avoid getting eaten alive. We shared the site with two groups of three Israelis, two Germans and a girl from New Jersey. Everyone went to bed ealry except us and three of the Israeli boys who also had no where to be until low tide the next day.
We got to the crossing two hours early, which really turned out to be more like three hours early because im too short to cross before the tide is almost all the way out. lame. The sun came out though and we spent most of that time in the water with a fun woman on holiday from London. When we finally decided to cross we spent half the distance waist deep in water an inch or so from soaking our packs before finaly making it to the other side and all but collapsing on the beach. Lucky for us someone bought an unprotected little parcel of land srrounded by the park and its own beach and turned it into a self sufficient cafe, hotel with great coffee and fresh baked goods. A dissapointing run in with the modern world in what was supposed to be the wilderness, but in the end a welcome one if only for the coffee and beer. The next two days of the hike were up and down through the hills and across beautiful beaches and coves until we made it back to where we camped at the trailhead. It was unbelievably georgious and unforgettable, no wonder some 30,000 people do it every year.
After getting cleaned up we decided to go back to the other side of the sounds and drive up the Queen Charlotte road to the peak of Queen Charllote sound. Another amazing drive and like most it was the most beautiful at the end where we camped in a family owned sheep grazing field lined with the beach of their private cove. It rained all the next day so we decided to avoid the ocean - sadly missing out on the easy picking of mussels at low tide- and watched the family sheer their sheep instead. Cool. They fill this big old barn - same one from the early 1900's with tags from the sheerers as far back as 1921- with sheep, keeping the lambs seperate from the ewes. The sheeres each have a station with electice sheers and one of the sons of the owners would fetch them a lamb. The sheerer then puts it on its but with its arm pinned behind its head and begins sheering in a very specific pattern; belly hair first, butt last and everthing else in between. The belly hair is kept seperate because its too fine and can only be used for things like socks, and the but hair is done last so they can throw it out while the rest gets swept into a pile and shoved into a machine to be packing into bags that can then be shipped off to the wool broker. Ok well its more interesting than it sounds, and we got to join a family at work on their ranch.