Marlborough Sounds

Tuesday, Dec 23rd, we started a kayak trip from Picton into the Queen Charlotte Sound. We had a guide with us the first day to help us figure out where to go and get a better idea of the area. The Queen Charlotte Sound is a very large area and we only had 2 days and one night to explore part of it.
The weather on the first day was gorgeous. Sunny and warm and not too windy. The first part near Picton is a little tricky just due to it being a major traffic lane for the Interislander ferry. Once we turned into the Grove Arm off the main traffic area, it was much more gentle. It was a very protected area so less wind, less waves, less boats.

Here we are - Dan in a single kayak, Marlene and me sharing a double. The kayaks were really nice fiberglass touring kayaks. They were huge! You can really stuff a lot of things in them which makes camping a breeze since you don't have to carry everything in a backpack.

The Marlborough Sounds consist of 1500 km of New Zealand's coastline (which is about 1/5 of the total coastline in NZ). The steep, wooded hills and small quiet bays of the sounds are sparsely populated, as access is difficult. Many of the small settlements and isolated houses are only accessible by boat. We were able to stop at many isolated little beaches for lunch and breaks throughout the day.

Towards the end of the day we stopped at Davies Bay for the night. We had the campground almost to ourselves except for one other woman who was on her last day hiking the Queen Charlotte track. The campground was pretty nice with running water and a shelter for cooking.

We took our dinner to the beach to watch the sunset over the Sounds. The area gets very quiet at night when all the day visitors go to their hotels back near Picton.

Wednesday, Dec 24th, we woke up, and it was raining. We had been so lucky with the weather the day before. We quickly got up and started kayaking back to Picton. The rain kept almost all other traffic off the water - we didn't have to get out of the way of any jet skis at least. The last part of the day was pretty rough coming back to Picton. A cold, strong southerly wind was blowing against us. It made paddling pretty hard and by the time we got back to Picton harbor we were very wet and cold. It made it that much nicer to shower and change into dry clothes and have a cup of hot cocoa.

Kayaking in the Sounds was quite an adventure, and it would be fun to explore more of the area since we just saw a very small part of it. Later that day we drove to Nelson, stopping for some great mussels and chowder at Havelock, the green-shell mussel capital of the world.