From Taupo I went on to Wellington to stay there for a night before taking the ferry down to the South Island. Arriving on the South Island on a very cloudy day, I went straight on to Nelson - which they call the sunshine city. Hahahahaha....didn't see the sun ( or even a dot of the blue sky ) for 2 days, it was raining straight for 2 days - you couldn't tell where the fog on the hillsides ended and the clouds began, I didn't have an idea what the surrounding of Nelson looks like till my last morning over there - when I left, the sun was shining from a blue sky, as if it would have been like that for ages....that's New Zealand, asking someone what the weather is gonna be like the next day will just earn you a strange look and a smile that says "How the hell to know what the weather is gonna be like, don't you know that you're in New Zealand? I took a bus up to the Abel Tasman Nationalpark and stayed at a little village called Marahau right at the start of the Abel Tasman coastal walk - trailhead...there was a lovely hostel over there, a real backpacker athmosphere, cozy with wooden funiture, a huge living room with soft big armchairs where everybody met for a chat in the evening !!! Did I mention that New Zealand is packed with germans ( especially those who just finished school and headed off for a year )? I'm speaking german all day long over here !!! A bunch of people from Dresden stayed at that hostel in Marahau, and talking to them and listening to our lovely accent made me feel like being home. I tramped one third of that costal walk that day towards Anchorage Bay, and walked back to Marahau in the afteroon to wait for another girl I met in Nelson, as we were planning on renting a kajak over there. My feet where like ice cubes that night, and it was cloudy again the next morning. When the girl finally arrived on a later bus it was to late to rent a kajak for that day, so we took the watertaxi to Awaroa Bay further north in the park, not without having a look on the that seal colony living on Tonga Island. We hiked through the rainforest ( now we know why it is called RAIN forest ) and along golden beaches, it was almost low tide, so we were able to take the shorter low tide route, althrough we had to wade through water now and then.... and finally made our way down south to Anchorage Bay just in time for the sunset and a barbeque on board of a boat over there where we spend the night. The next day was the sunniest day so far, so after been droped off by the captain of the boat we just lay on the beach of Anchorage Bay till noon ( must have had looked like the seals we had seen the day before ) and hiked over to the next cove in the early afternoon to wait for our kajaks to get ashore - to make a little guided seakajaking tour back to Marahau. I just loved it, unless we didn't make it to Marahau on our kajaks, althrough we would have had to surround just one more cliff. But some wind came up and the waves got so high and strong that we didn't make much process while paddeling and paddeling, so our guide advised us to turn and let us drift back towards the last beach we had passed to wait for the watertaxi, which was really busy with picking up all those kajaks along the shoreline of the nationalpark. I had a lot of fun out there with all those waves, our landing on the beach was funny too, because the last wave that reached us made our kajak turn over, so we finally went for a swim. I returned to Nelson in the evening, gonna stay here for one more night before heading down south towards a little town called St. Arnaud ( off the beaten path, eh??).