Day Seven-Burnt out kayaking

Elbie: The adorable hostel dog who makes me miss Bill Scrapps.
He's 1/2 mini schnauzer, 1/4 jack russell, 1/4 staffordshire terrier.

[Unfortunately I have minimal pictures for this post because I used my phone and am unable to transfer the pictures to my computer.]

I woke at 6:00 in the morning and biked to Tata beach to meet up with the Golden Bay Kayak company for a guided tour of the waters outside the Abel Tasman park. Another german from the hostel loaned me some sporty gloves so I didn’t have to wear the housewives gloves. This German’s name was Kai which he informed me meant “food” in Maori and was thus fast friends with any Maori he met. 

At Golden Bay Kayaks I was put in a group of six people from Finland and two odd men out, one of which was me. Each Kayak sat two people so I paired up with the other oddball who was an Austrian man. He was vacationing with his young family who were currently sleeping while he snuck out to go kayaking. We got to talking and I found out that he was starting a company that takes discarded Austrian wine grapes, salvages the seeds and makes different oils from the grape seeds. He and his wife actually invented the machine that extracted the oil from the grape seeds. They used a cold press process which does less damage to all the good stuff in the oil. 

Thankfully for my skin the morning was cloudy. We saw stingrays, many cool birds, a mussel farm,  and fantastic rock formations. Unfortunately we did not encounter any baby seals. However, I fell in love with sea kayaking. I think I would have kayaked all day if they had let me. 

At one point my Austrian companion pointed out that we were lagging behind the kayak group and that “Finland” was ahead. My competitive spirit kicked in and we promptly left Finland in the dust. 

Following my kayak adventure, an hour bike ride brought me back to the hostel. Though I had worn gloves and sunscreen the bike ride home had done a number on the fronts of my feet. My hands were still on fire. I broke down and made my way to a pharmacy and got some numbing spray. For the rest of the afternoon I sat in my trailer with bags of ice strapped to my feet and hands and watched t.v. shows on my computer. I started to get freaked out that I had sun poisoning and googled the local hospital.  I got depressed at my condition.

The sun finally set and 600mg of Ibuprofen later, numbed and iced, I went for a short walk after dinner. While a vampire lifestyle would be easy to pull off back in Nashville, days in New Zealand were long and sunny. I knew I needed to stay out of the sun to improve but the damn thing was unavoidable. 

New Zealand fun fact: 

In 1986 after the Chernobyl incident there was an exodus of young, educated Germans to areas of the world considered “green”. New Zealand was one of these areas and many settled in Golden Bay, New Zealand. Then, they had little hippie families and now, 10% of Golden Bay New Zealand are Germans. This does not explain why there are so many German tourists pissing my German friend off.