After a long year of Pacific Northwest
rain, our Grinder Gear staff and families decided to take a vacation to
New Zealand for some adventure, rest, and relaxation. We spent most of
our time on New Zealand's South Island and one of our favorite locations
was Abel Tasman National Park.
Abel Tasman is one of the most beautiful areas in all of New Zealand. It
is not typical of the rest of this island nation because it is chock
full of white sandy beaches, deep blue water, giant fern trees, and
boasts more sun per year than anywhere else in New Zealand.
The National Park is a haven for adventure travel and is best known for
its incredible sea kayaking along New Zealand's northeastern coast.
Imagine gliding along in your kayak next to a craggy coastline on water
that is unbelievably warm and blue. Every one or two kilometers, you can
pull out onto white sandy beaches and hike around in a deep lush forest
with gigantic 15-meter tree ferns. The local bird population is
incredible, with large populations of oystercatchers, cormorants, gulls,
herons and weka.
We stayed a total of three days in Abel Tasman. While there, I used my
Pocket PC to help me identify wildlife, keep track of water taxi
schedules, take journal notes, determine sunrise and sunset times (after
all, you need to pack every minute with adventure) and locate stars in
the southern sky.
Preparing for New Zealand
Before leaving the States, I downloaded a number of Web pages onto the
Pocket PC for me to reference while I was on the trip. These proved to
be helpful, as I was able to use that information as a guidebook to make
decisions on where to go, what to eat, and what to do. I found that 100%
Pure New Zealand (www.PureNZ.com) and the
New Zealand Virtual Tour site (http://nz.com/ tour)
had the best pages. Make sure that you have lots of RAM in your Pocket
PC because the Web pages take up a lot of memory.
Getting Web pages into your Pocket PC is pretty easy. Use MS Explorer
and when you find a site that you like, move up to the tools menu item.
Select "Create Mobile Favorite." This page will be added to
your Mobile Favorites Folder and the next time you synch with your
Pocket PC, it will be there for you to view with Pocket Explorer.
I also downloaded a number of maps in .jpeg format so I could view them
on the Pocket PC (see Screen 1). I found that I did most of my driving
and navigation with a regular paper map because it was pretty hard to
look at the screen of my handheld while driving down the road at 100
km/hr. I used the .jpeg maps in the evenings while planning our
itinerary for the next day. They also served as a great reference for
when I wrote in my journal.
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