wineglass bay

Wineglass Bay has a really good branding campaign. It's in all the top 10 lists for Tasmania. Chinese tourists drive here for the day from Launceston and Hobart.

This is not Wineglass Bay. This is Coles Bay, where I went kayaking at sunset. To see Wineglass Bay, you have the climb the saddle between the 2nd and 3rd mountain. After an hour, you get a great view.

Instead, I went for this kind of wine glass, filled with Tasmanian chardonnay. And possibly the best salmon I've ever had.

I really wanted to try the abalone sashimi or the prawns, but it was an oyster farm, so slurped down 6 oysters too.

Back to the national park.

Please leave your drone at home. Also your single-use plastic water bottle. The park service office has a tap for your refillables. And you have a choice of still or sparkling!

I headed up to the lighthouse, which faces east. If you go 1000 kilometers east across the Tasman Sea, you wind up on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. This is what Abel Tasman, for whom Tasmania and the Tasman Sea are named, did.

Also Abel Tasman National Park, where years ago I went kayaking with Steffi. 

I took some time to laze around before kayaking, since I wasn't climbing to the Wineglass Bay looked. The smooth orange granite reminded me of Georgian Bay, Ontario, a place I went to years after seeing a picture of it in Toronto.

I can't help it, I like rocks. And kayaking.

The shells were great too. It was low tide, and more and more shoreline and fossils were exposed.

I put my camera in the dry bag, so you won't see pictures of the rays we say or the sea eagle or the gorgeous oyster catchers, which apparently, don't catch oysters. One of the guides was my paddling partner, which made it extra easy. Did I mention the home-baked cookies? We paddled around 6 kilometers. Conditions were perfect.

I had plenty of time to think about past kayaking adventures: in San Francisco Bay with Keith and the Napa River with Pam; in Catalina with Susan; at Elkhorn Slough with Alexis, Jonah, and Jim after Joyce's wedding; at Hopewell in the Marlborough Sounds with Hidde and Okarito with Charlotte; and with my mom in the Oleta River.

Hard to imagine a better day.

sea adventures

"You paddle to a haunted house and a shipwreck. It's like a whole episode of Scooby Do."

We set off for the orange roof across the sound. Lynley encouraged us to hug the shore but mostly we didn't listen. 

The wind was at our backs. The hotel at St Omer's is abandoned. 

I loved the gazebo and watching a pied shag devour its lunch in one gulp. 

We hit rougher currents returning but finished strong and warmed up in the hot tub. 

Another day in paradise. 

stick in the mud

Okarito is also famous for the kohuku or white heron sanctuary.

Charlotte and I headed out in a double kayak across the windy lagoon at high tide and quickly spotted one. As we tried to get closer, it flew off. 

This emboldened us to head away from the official markers into the reeds. 

A heron flew overhead! We paddled to another part of the lagoon and found ourselves wedged into 6 inches of gray silt. We pushed and paddled like a gondola but didn't seem to go anywhere. 

A shag watched from the rock. Eventually Charlotte got out barefoot and wedged us free. 

We entered a peaceful grove of ferns, not far from the area where we listened for kiwi the night before. 

The lagoon had an amber color like root beer. 

We were late returning so we cheated and got a ride back. 

Who needs cross-fit when you can haul a kayak up a steep hillside using only a rope? (Or have someone do it for you.)

All in all, a quiet peaceful way to spend a morning. I'll come back to Okarito one day soon. Glad it hasn't changed too much in the years I've been away.