Another beautiful day and a highlight on this trip visiting the Abel Tasman National Park.

First things first, breakfast back at the Courthouse Cafe, our go to cafe in this area. Ok the pickings are slim, but this cafe is excellent and would shine anywhere.

Goodbye Collingwood as we climbed up and over a few hills heading back towards Motueka.

The views towards the Aorere Valley were clear. This is the valley we cycled to get to Langfords store.

Riding back through Takaka and Motupipi we headed to Pohara and the coastline.

Ligar Bay was next as we followed the coast road.

This shack is on a slither of land that juts out from the beach on one side and a tidal inlet on the other. Perfectly positioned.

Above Tata Beach we climbed sharply. Quite a hard little climb too and it was getting quite warm.

At the top the views were those within the national park.

Looks like a mussel farm? Mussels are certainly popular locally.

Then the fun began. looking at our climbing graph, that nasty climb to 300 metres was all on gravel, loose and slippery in parts due to no recent rain dampening it down.

I knew this would be a challenge for me in addition to the gravel dust from other users.

I did it. Up and down! In fact, I prefer up to the slippery down. We dud get passed by two blokes on mtb e-bikes and a plethora of cars, some towing boats.

What a place. Totaranui Beach is my new favourite place in New Zealand. It’s magnificent.

You can camp here but there were no caravans as the road is not suitable.

We arrived 2 hours before our ferry shuttle was due so we did enjoy chilling on the beach.

Popular with boats, campers and bushwalkers, the area is serviced by a few water taxi and ferry shuttles. They drop bush walkers off and collect. We saw many walkers leave with their backpacks.

We booked with Wilson’s and can highly recommend them to cyclists. We needed to remove our rear panniers, pedals front bags. The bikes were strapped to the railings at the front of the boat.

We are a bit ‘precious’ about our bikes but have nothing but compliments for the crew.

The ferry shuttle made about five stops along the coastline picking up a variety of people. We sat with a Dutch couple who had spent 4 hours walking a particular trail and were heading back to their hire car in Kaiteriteri.

There was commentary provided by the crew about the local history including granite mining, forestry, maritime reserve efforts and fur seal colonies.

Lots of wonderful looking beaches and rugged coastline. The only way in is by boat or walking.

The route our ferry took.

Once in Kaiteriteri the ferry beached itself and off we all piled.

We put our luggage and pedals back on and high tailed it to Motueka climbing and winding out way out and eventually dropping back into the Great Taste Trail.

We are in Motueka overnight and enjoyed a nice meal at the Sprig and Fern, having given up on the Motueka Hotel when after one hour they’d not started cooking our dinner, and we were one of the early orders.

Totaranui is a definite highlight, plus the effort taken to actually get there!

Getting ready for another day, thanks for reading 😊❣️🚴