A Small Bit of a Great Area

Callie and I took a vacation from our year abroad and ducked across to the south island this week for a short visit to what looked like a beautiful area, the Marlborough sounds seen here on Google Maps. The two major ferry companies, BlueBridge and Interislander, depart downtown Wellington and arrive in Picton as you can see here near the bottom of the map. Thanks to one of our travel guides we had found a backpackers hostel that not only had rooms available for very reasonable rates, but also included the free perk of dog walking should we be so inclined. Upon arrival we were greeted by a very friendly yellow lab. After we checked in and dropped some of our stuff off we went out in search of lunch. My first New Zealand sausage roll and a cranberry brie pie for Callie accomplished this task. We decided to look into the hiking trail that was recommended by the information site staff. This took us over a little bridge and up into the woods up a hill as shown here in yellow.

Shortly into the hike we took a look back to the harbour and saw the two ferries in dock as well as a very active lumber ship yard.

This was at almost the beginning of the hike. The map we had for this hike listed the length of the different legs of this walk, like 10 minutes from the harbour to this look out point, another 15 minutes for the next leg so Callie and I did not think too much about the overall length of the hike. About an hour and a half into the hike, we reached the main view point which is named Queen Charlotte View and is located at the A arrow on the map. There we were greeted with a view of 5 bays, 1 cove, 1 point, 1 mountain and the Queen Charlotte sound all within this view.

The trail continued on for another 40 minutes to the Snout (arrow B on the map) at the end of the trail which ended in another beautiful view of the area but with a bit more water level view. Callie ventured to the end of the walk and peered over the edge into the water to find a fun sight.


This harem of seals was rolling around and around in the shallow water right next to the point for as long as we were there. Other than a bunny and a bunch of birds, this was probably the most remarkable wild creature we have seen so far. We watched them for a while until the rain started to pick up. We took a photo to show that it was actually us there and ventured back up the muddy trail to return home.


We returned to the hostel after grabbing some dinner at The Flying Haggis, and yes, Haggis WAS on the menu, and NO neither of us tried it. We slept in to awake the next morning for our day long kayaking adventure. We met up with the tour guide at their shop that was about a quarter of a mile from our hostel. There we set off on the road to Ngakuta bay ( the blue C arrow on the map ) where we boarded our two person kayak and set out along the blue line.

We came across a colony of Shags hanging out on the rock.

Callie's paddling and my steering skills were put to the test going through a hole in the rock between two of the bays.

We paddled down the other side of the sound seeing some of old growth forest that had been protected before it was logged.

We set in for lunch at one of first camp sites along the Queen Charlotte trail ( the blue D arrow on the map) and enjoyed a very tasty chicken sandwich and muesli bar.

According to our tour guide, part of what makes the Marlborough Sounds so...soundy...is that the area is located right along the fault line where the Australian tectonic plate is both sub-ducting and rotating under the Pacific plate. This translates into the sounds region slowly sinking into the ocean at about the rate of half an inch a year. Leave it to nature to use such a slow process to both create and destroy what seems to be the most beautiful place on this planet.