"penguins are very vulnerable to disturbance and harassment"

A spectacular sunrise this morning, at 7:24am, turned out to be a great omen of the day to come.  On the way to our boat ride around Abel Tasman bay, I just had to get out of the car to take a picture of one of the numerous messages written  in stones in the low tidal marches (we did not see anyone actually do it, but there are a lot of these)- this one  inspired us to keep moving:

As we parked by the little cove where the boat was moored, this sign implied that there would be a lot of wild life today (also, it made me laugh and feel a kinship to my brethren the penguins - I too feel quite vulnerable to disturbance and harassment - although I have to say that dogs have rarely been the culprit.....).
If you can't read it - the sign says:
"Blue penguins live and nest in this area.  Penguins are very vulnerable to disturbance and harassment, especially by dogs. Make this beach a safe place for penguins by traveling below the hide tide line and keeping your dog under control and in sight at all times."

We did see 2 blue penguins today - which was lucky, because they go to sea during the day to feed, but a couple of them floated by the boat - but dove to catch fish too quickly for us to take pictures.  They are the smallest penguins, and I was very happy to catch this too brief sight of them.
The boat took us all around the coast of the Abel Tasman National park, named after the Dutch explorer who gave new Zealand its name in 1642 - although he never landed there.  He came close to shore, but was  attacked  by Maoris, lost 4 men and left.  Thomas Cook is the first European to actually make landing - in the North island    A French explorer (Derville) is the first European to land in the south island, around Nelson (although Tasman had drawn relatively accurate  maps of the shore, without ever landing), but not until the 17th century.  For a while it looked like the South island might become French, but Cook had already claimed it for England.

The park is famous for it's coves filled with gold sand, it's granite rocks and cliffs, it's turquoise water, it's forests filled with native birds, and it's marine sanctuary, which houses not only the already mentioned blue penguins, but also 12 types of cormorants, seals (with pups this time of the year), and all types of interesting birds.  Joe took over 200 pictures, and even with all these, it is not possible to capture the beauty, the sounds of the birds, the magnificence of it all.  Here are just a few samples of the day.
This is the boat that took us around:

This spectacular rock formation, called "the split apple" but European and "Split egg" by the Mauri poeple, is believe (by the Mauris) to have resulted from the god of the water and the god of the land arguing about who it belonged to- since it is in the water at high tide, and on land at low tide.  In a Solomon-like result, the rock ended up split in two....

The color of the water is the most brilliant turquoise, and the beaches are truly golden, making each little cove, and each hill that surrounds it it's own small paradise.

I simply could not resist the temptation, and had to go for a swim.  The locals seem to think that the water is too cold by now, but at 20 degrees (68 farenheit) and on a perfect warm day, it was blissful!.  besides, I just cannot resist jumping into a new body of water - and my next change to get into the Tasman sea may not be soon - and - could you resist water that looks like this?

Along the shore, we also stopped to admire the wildlife and listen to all the birds (I don't have a picture of that....).  This is another area where they are trying to re-introduce naive birds and trees - because there are a lot of islands in the bay, the population of imported pests like rats, weasels and possums can be tightly controlled (they catch and kill them....) which had made it possible for the local birds to recover.
We really liked all the different types of cormorants, and this pretty oyster catcher:

The seal population, which had been disseminated even before the Europeans arrived (the Maoris ate a lot of them!) is recovering well too - in fact they have been protected by the NZ government since 1840 - I don't know for sure, but this has to be one of the first species protected by any government (Side note:  the NZ government is progressive in a lot of ways - did you know for instance that it is the first country to give women the right of vote - in 1873- a full 50 years before the US?).
There are still a lot of little seal pups playing around the island, they are adorable, but hard to catch on picture..... (look at the rock in the middle - the black blobs in the middle are seal pups playing....)

During all of this, we found time for a stroll in the forest where we admired the native flora:

and of course, had a nice lunch on the deck of the boat:

As if all of this were not magical enough, this full rainbow welcomed us back to port:

Tomorrow, we will zig-zag our way to the "high country" (the alpine meadows north-west of Christchurch).  We are first going from here to the west coast and following it for a bit, before going over the mountain and Arthur's pass to near Christchurch.  It's good that Joe has by now had some time to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, because Fodor's guide uses a lot of words like "narrow, steep, twisty and challenging" to describe the road - but it also says it is spectacular....  when i'm not busy closing my eyes and praying, I'll try to take pictures......