Abel Tasman to Cape Farewell

We decide to kill the time out in the Abel Tasman National Park, one of New Zealand's most popular destinations. On our way, we spot congregations of hippie vans parked in fields, clustered in little communes, and people are walking around barefoot and playing with fire sticks. Just typical.

We score a brilliant free campsite in Caanan Downs. Really it's just a field, but it's beside the forest where a scene from The Lord of the Rings was shot. You know that part where the elves are all leaving, walking through the woods to the ships? Well that was it. We walk down that same path through the woods, to Howard's Hole, New Zealand's biggest vertical shaft. I can not in any way describe how enormous, tall, deep, and fantastic it is. Even a picture couldn't do it justice (which is why there isn't one). It is a little scary exploring the cave, because you can't even see the bottom. We hear Bell Birds calling, and their song echoes through the stones. The entire landscape seems so timeless, at any moment I expect to see a Triceratops.

We plan to see some more of the park the following day, but in the night it starts to rain. By morning it's a downpour. We rush around packing up in the rain, rolling up wet tents, squeaking in soggy sneakers. I get into the car shivering, while Medellee tries to unfog the windows. We make an immediate and unanimous decision to find a hot pub meal, pronto.

By the time we reach Te Kaka (you'll love this dad, there's a river called Pupu here), the rain has slowed to fat drops and occasional drizzle. I order tea and seafood chowder, update my facebook status, and read my book. By 3:00, though, it looks brighter, so we decide to drive up to Cape Farewell and see the bird sanctuary.

It's about a three-hour walk. We start in farmland, walking through wet muck and grass, parts of which have flooded with the sudden rain. Dinosaur-like pukeko wade in packs, lifting their strange reptilian legs and flicking their white tails with every step. We walk through hillsides dotted with sheep, and here and there, rocky protrusions that look like the guts of the mountains trying to escape. Clouds cling to the craggy cliff-sides, reminding me of nothing more than what I imagine Scotland to look like.

Eventually, the path meanders down to sandy dunes and a frighteningly vast beach, where fog obscures all edges. The roar of the wind and waves are deafening. This place is called Fossil Point, so we wander up the beach, looking in the cliff-sides for fossils. But all we find are old shells (I wanted something more exotic).

Suddenly, John, who's a hundred metres ahead of me, gives a loud yell. There is a note of panic in his voice I've never heard from him before, and he runs out from a cove of rocks at high speed, shouting. I meet him halfway in a matter of seconds and see what he sees: a bull fur seal, raised up, snarling, just a few feet away. It is enormous. John literally stepped on it while it was sleeping. I take a few pictures of the menacing animal, figuring seals don't move too fast on sand and I've got the advantage. But I back off at the insistence of my mates.

We look around and realize that many of the "rocks" all around us are sleeping fur seals. We have wandered into a colony. John, maybe mildly embarrassed for his fright, boldly goes ahead to explore, while I walk toward a few others and try to get a photograph. Suddenly another seal, a female I think, bolts up on one side of me and charges right for John.

I had no idea that seals could move that fast on land.

"John!" I scream. "Look out!!"

John just has time to glance behind him and take a few running steps, but I realize that there is no way he can get away fast enough.

The animal reaches him, runs right by him, and squirms into the waves, where she escapes her human predators to live another day.

Hearts pounding, we all decide to get out of there. This is way too much nature.

****

The walk continues north for about an hour. Walking on the endless beach is like walking on a treadmill, where the receding fog gradually reveals yet more beach. Long grasses grow in clumps on the windswept dunes, and the perfectly curling surf foams and stretches out on the hard-packed sand. We finally reach the spit, which is yet more beach, and turn the corner to a vast wasteland of mud. Black swans waddle far out, and clams spit up at us underfoot. The water looks like it's made of paint, an oily sheen reflecting the sky. On one side, snarling trees silhouette against the clouds, and ahead, a storm is gathering on the mountains.

We catch the rain on the highway back. It's the kind of downpour that windshield wipers aren't built to withstand.

We make an immediate and unanimous decision to sleep in a hostel overnight.

By the skin of our teeth we get beds, because no one wants to camp in the rain, and Annie's Nirvana Lodge has just had a cancellation not five minutes before. Everywhere else is full. We stop at the grocer and buy two pounds of potatoes, twenty dollars worth of ground beef, a bag of frozen vegetables, some beef broth and a bottle of red wine. In the hostel kitchen, Medellee and I make friends with a woman from Israel while we set to work on the biggest, most delicious shepherd's pie we can concoct. It is eleven o'clock at night by the time the four of us sit down and eat two or three helpings each. The rain comes down in buckets outside, and the wind rattles all the windows.

Full, warm, and sleepy, laying in my bunk and listening to the storm at midnight, I can only be grateful for where I am. There is no way our duct-taped-together tent could survive another storm like this.