Marahau – Bark Bay (26.1 km)

Wednesday, February 27: Cloudy in the morning with a touch of drizzle, becoming clear and sunny in the course of the day

GPS Tour
Youtube Video

Was up before 7:00 to shower and pack what remained. Breakfast was unusually well populated today, and I left behind what remained of milk and bread.

Then it was time to collect the key deposit and get on the road to Marahau. Fairly slow going because of the built-up areas, and going the other way was rush hour into town and long queues. Stopped off at a supermarket in Motueka for some odd supplies and arrived in Marahau just before 10:00 at the place I had chosen for the water taxi back, bought my ticket, parked the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the long term carpark, and started walking pretty much on the dot of 10:00.

Lots of people on the track and lots of boats and planes moving people around. Apart from that the track is extremely picturesque with aquamarine bays and golden sands. I had a bit of a longer tour ahead of me today, so I marched on as fast as I could and I think I may have established one or two NZ land speed records. In any case I was in Anchorage in just 2½ hours and camped outside the hut for lunch – two beef sandwiches I had prepared this morning. Plenty of people on the beach swimming and sunbathing.

Because of the tide I had to take the longer route around Torrent River to the settlement. Photos of a lot of views along the way. Then there was a longer hill with an inviting water pool – will have more time for these diversions tomorrow. The second part of the tramp was completed in 2¾ hours, then it was sock washing and an attempt at a full bracketed panorama of the bay.

GPS Tour: Abel Tasman Coastal Track 1: Marahau – Bark Bay

There is a major problem with the tripod-camera adapter which compromises swivelling the camera around on the fixed tripod. Since the camera is not attached on the level, levelling the camera for one shot and swivelling it results in a skew series. Two possible solutions: Level the camera and rotate the whole tripod (draw a circle on the ground to start with); or take a series of slightly skew images and hope that Hugin can deal with it.

Took a series with solution #1 and should have time to test #2 tomorrow. Tonight looks like there’ll be some star photography.

Dinner was fettucini with surprise mixed veg – all the veg fell out when mixed with the noodles but with a bit of salt and pepper it was quite tasty. And then there was a boiled egg for dessert.

After demonstrating CHDK to another Canon user (Patrick) I went to see if I could take a sunset series, but not only was the sky rather dull, but the card started striking again. Must try partitioning the card & making it bootable and test to see if the card will go beyond 2 GB of pictures.

As the night was turning out so well we went down to the lagoon to enjoy the sky. Pretty soon Jupiter and Sirius were visible. Then the moon rose and I got a couple of those forced perspective shots of a couple of guys standing in the full moon.

Then I convinced Patrick to apply his Canon 60D to taking a shot of Jupiter at full zoom and see what he could see, lending him my tripod for the process. Much to everyone’s delight he succeeded within a few shots in getting three of the moons as well. Then everyone else went off to the rather full hut to go to sleep and I stayed behind to do a series of the south celestial pole @ 15″ per shot, and then of Orion & Jupiter @ 1″ per shot before the tide started filling the lagoon.

A couple of snorers in the other dorm but they stopped – or were stopped – pretty soon & so got some sleep.