I had always wanted to visit Queen Charlotte Sounds and with an invitation from Wilderness Guides that ‘date’ was finally going to happen. This adventure would take 3days; a hike, a bike and kayak and as this title suggests it was the beginning of a real location romance.
Arriving in Picton, the heart of the Marlborough Sounds the air was unseasonably cool, but you were distracted from the lack of summer warmth by the absolute beauty of Sounds. We caught up at Wilderness Guides HQ and were fully and expertly briefed about our upcoming trip.
You know when someone looks at you and you can see doubt in their eyes? Martyn, our Wilderness Guide, looks at us with ‘professional’ concern as he explains day two’s 24km mountain bike ride.
“Just how much mountain biking experience do you have?” he asks dubiously.
We are 3 women in our 50s with varying levels of competence and Martyn obviously has doubts about our biking abitilies. He explains that this is a difficult ride, rated a grade 4-5, and we will likely be pushing our bikes up and down hills for a fair amount of the track. He offers us the easier option of riding along a road through Kenepuru Sounds, but we fail to take the hint and reply, It's OK, we'll be right, we'll stick to the track! How naive we were...
THE HIKE
As day one dawns, another unseasonably cold one, it’s an early start as we meet the guides for a final briefing at 7.30 am. With a pack lunch provided we board Beachcomber Cruises for our ride out to the start of the track at Ship Cove.
45 minutes into the journey a pod of dolphins appear alongside the boat, playing in the waves and wake of our vessel. They are so close we can almost touch them.
This story is from the February - March 2020 edition of Adventure Magazine.
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This story is from the February - March 2020 edition of Adventure Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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