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Ain't nothing gonna get me down  Starting in the middle of the story: we are all isolating in Matt and Sarah's house in Wellington for 7 days after Matt went down with the dreaded covid.  This is certainly our closest encounter with SARS-CoV-2 and so far none of the other seven inhabitants have tested positive.  It's a wrench that has always been hovering above our travelling gears but until now has, perhaps surprisingly, not dropped into the works.  Well now it has and here we are and there you go. And since I am too lazy to rewrite my own blogs, I can conclude this paragraph at the end of story and tell you that everyone except Toby and Maisy have now tested positive. More of the end of the story coming in the middle of the blog. Confused. But before the now or the after, the before...   First the ferry.  On a perfectly still, sunny and cool Thursday morning we eased out of Picton harbour to make the serene passage through the Marlborough Sounds and ...

  Anchorage Bay, Abel Tasman National Park May 8-11 - We stopped by PackGearGo to pick up some rental sleeping bags and cooking stuff on the way into Nelson then took a day off to pack our gear and get ready to go, and to celebrate Mother's Day!  Sorry not to see Nelson's sights but we did venture out onto the rail trail path for a little running and biking.  City's of the world recreational amenities audit complete, it was on to menu planning and once again carving order out of our explosion of gear that fills every one of our Airbnb's like a foam party. Happy Mother's Day! Maybe we should branch out from eggs benedict next year? Day 5 covid test The Abel Tasman national park sits on the north-west corner of the South Island and enjoys some spectacular wild coastline along which one can walk.  The full distance takes 3-5 days but courtesy of the wonder of water taxis, hikers, or trampers as they are known in New Zealand and only in New Zealand, can pick sections at...

Deciding to come to New Zealand was a last minute thing once the country unexpectedly opened up to about 60 visa waiver countries, including Canada. We had to make some compromises and ended up allocating only 20 days to this part of the trip.  We also decided to do both the south and north islands, not sure that we would be back here for a very long time.  So apart from a couple of days in Queenstown and our planned 3-day Abel Tasman trek, much of our south island experience would be a driving tour.  Having just completed the 2-day, 800km drive to Nelson it is almost impossible to sum it all up.  Mesmerising is the word that comes to mind.  Almost every kilometre had beautiful, interesting and varied scenery from ancient mountains to alpine glory, resplendent and expansive lakes, dense sub-tropical vegetation, endless Pacific coastline and rarely a straight stretch of road to be seen. So many lakes and mountains - south island scenery We made sure to break up t...