Tramping in Southern NZ

A guy from New Zealand once told me that you can walk around blindly anywhere in New Zealand, stop somewhere, take a picture and it will be a gorgeous one...
If that might not be true for all of NZ (Auckland??), it is definitely true for the Abel Tasman National Park. Lush forests, gorgeous beaches, fantastic treks, cristal-clear water - and at this time of the year: Not so many tourists as well (during the summer months there are about 10x as many tourists tramping in the Abel Tasman)...

Unfortunately I couldn't really live out my happy snapping after my camera fell into a (salt) water pool just 2h after I began to walk...So for the next 4 days of tramping my camera was either not reacting at all or just took random pictures which were not saved on the card. On my last day in the national park just shortly before I reached the end of the trek my cam fortunately worked again and I took some pictures...uploaded them here already.
Apart from the beauty of the nature in this park, I also had some very good encounters with fellow travellers. Funny was the hitch-hike back to the place I started when a guy gave me some marihuana after taking me in his car - just like that (I must have looked terrible after the trek... :) ).

Shortly afterwards I headed to Nelson (nice little city, good starting point for several treks in the region), Punakaiki (fantastic blowholes and rock formations - called the Pancake Rocks), Greymouth (very nice road in direction of Christchurch over the NZ-Alps), Christchurch and then back to Auckland...All in all I really had an amazing time here in NZ and will definitely visit this country again...

Now I'm already on the Hong Kong airport waiting for my connection flight to Delhi...looking very much forward to see Franziska again there in 3 days...