Trading our tramping boots for kayak paddles

Weary, hungry, and thirsty, we finally made it to out DOC hut destination in Bark Bay. After 7.5 hours of hiking, we were ready to relax.

I woke up surprisingly early the next morning, and was able to catch sunrise. It was just me and a couple of New Zealand ducks to welcome the new day.

Absolutely stunning!

Denise joined me shortly after the sun started heating up. We strolled around a bit to kill some time before our kayak guide arrived by water taxi with our kayaks.

Our guide arrived around 9:00 in the morning smiling and greeting us with some cookies juice for breakfast. Denise and I would be piloting a two man kayak, and our guide K.P. had his own slick looking sea going vessel. We were the only ones on the guided kayak tour back to where we started, so we got an exclusive tour of the coast of Abel Tasman. K.P. had a wealth of knowledge about the park and New Zealand. He is half Maori and overall a cool old dude. He has been just about everywhere and done just about everything in the adventure arena.

This is K.P. below pointing out Seal Island, our next destination.

We played around with the seals for a bit at Seal Island. They would circle around and under kayak, and pop their heads up every now and again out of curiosity.

After the seal encounter, we stopped for lunch in this cove. As exhausted as we were, we took K.P.'s recommendation to do a short hike up the near by mountain to get a great view of the bay.

We made it threw the last leg of the journey and my body was so tired at that point, i could not even lift the camera to snap any more photos. It was an exhausting, yet wonderful day!