Ship cove to camp bay

The Kaitaki delivered me to Picton after a dead flat sailing on 1 December and I was on another vessel early next morning, heading for Ship Cove.

We passed flocks of fluttering shearwaters and the signature sign for Marlborough Sounds, poisoned wilding pines. 

The Bluebridge Ferry in the background is turning into Tory Channel and we are skipping up Queen Charlotte Sound. 

The water taxi left me and six others (day trippers) on the jetty, where I saw a sting ray skutching in the shallows and then hiding in sand. Its tail was visible though! 

Captain Cook made 5 stays of about three weeks each time between 1770 and 1777 in the cove, to mend things and re-water. It amazes me how he navigated there each time.

Once I got walking, there was a view north to Motuara Island which has been a wildlife reserve for nearly thirty years. 

The track climbs to Tawa Saddle, where I could see the Kaikoura mountains to the south. 

It takes a good 3.5 hours to find the first cider of the day. Thankfully the budget permits lunch stops at posh joints like Furneaux Lodge. 

And their cauliflower/quinoa/chick pea burger is terrific. 

A bit further on I could see my destination, Camp Bay, on the other side of Endeavour Inlet. 

If you needed ad hoc walking poles you could buy them at Madsens Camp, not far from abandoned antimony mines. 

As I rounded into Big Bay, I noticed a boat trailing dolphins,

and was gloomy with envy. However I passed a nice spot for a break, 

being the first beech trees I'd encountered. Mostly, the vegetation is manuka scrub. These trees and all the others I passed later had scale insect bums oozing honey dew. 

No bees or wasps feeding on them, so bellbirds and tui have the resource to themselves. 

It was pretty hot by then but a pretty waterfall cooled the air, 

and a juvenile weka played hide-and-seek in the undergrowth. 

I found another youngster and then an adult came over to supervise. 

Then, to my intense joy, those dolphins happened along below me. They sounded like a troupe of unfit runners, puffing and tail slapping past. I ran with them to an opening in the trees, 

and was rewarded again when I reached Camp Bay. Who should be putting on a show for thrilled visitors but my new friends, the thirty-plus bottlenose dolphins! 

I think pizza and beer and dolphin antics - one individual tail slapped the water 34 times - is the acme of hiking pleasure, probably the highlight of my TA walk. So that's how I celebrated eight hours walking, dolphin watching at the Punga Cove bar!