Unless you’re a migrating whale, you don’t go past Golden Bay on your way to anywhere. Imagine a region with endless variety, breathtaking scenery, where golden beaches, alpine valleys and tranquil fishing rivers share a close proximity with the sea. At the north eastern edge of Able Tasman, the well known national park, Golden Bay seemed the perfect place for a short while.

Firstly, New Zealand has a series of Holiday Parks which most closely resemble KOAs in the states. When the name of your holiday park has beach, seaside or seal colony in their name, you just know it is going to be special. The park has campers, tenters, and cabin dwellers. We are cabin dwellers, however here they cabins are a series of prefab “batches”. A open space with a bed, small kitchenette, table/chairs and perhaps a sofa and an attached bathroom. It’s all you need, an oversized hotel room that comes with your own patio or yard and in this case your own beachfront. Happiness.

This huge bay was the perfect place to kayak. High tide and flat seas — we are off through the rocks, (literally) and morning coffee on the beach. In the afternoon, when the winds were howling, blo carts on the beach were just too tempting. Described as sailing on hard packed sand, the driver maneuvers the cart across the beach and turns HARD and QUICK into the wind to reverse direction sometimes coming up on two wheels and screeching back on yourself before careening in the opposite direction again. Think figure 8. Combine that frenzy with both of us hurtling our carts at each other, you get so many giggles, you’re just exhausted in the end.

Low tide on another day brought us to Wharariki Beach. The sand dunes here are magnificent, or the limestone rocks pounded by the surf is really something to see. The real highlight is the baby seal pups in the tide pool learning to swim and play with their new mates. They were so much fun to watch and photograph.