Abel Tasman

I know I haven’t gotten the rest of my South Island trip up yet, but that is already in the past, so I wanted to write this up while I remembered it so well.

I took off on Tuesday for a five-day trip around the Abel Tasman area.  I had walked into STA Travel about a month earlier and said to the agent I always use, “I want to go sea kayaking, tramping, and horse trekking somewhere.  Let’s plan a trip!”  I did this trip by myself, and I am happy that I went alone.  It was great to not be responsible or accountable to anyone, to be free to walk the track as fast or as slow as I felt like, and to be able to take random detours without asking anyone if they wanted to go with me.  

On Tuesday I flew to Nelson and then caught a series of busses to Marahau, a settlement on the edge of Abel Tasman National Park.  I arrived in mid-afternoon, so after I dropped my bags in my room, I headed off for a brief walk into the park.  I was struck by how many people I passed coming out.  The Abel Tasman Coastal Track is one of the “Great Walks” of New Zealand, and it is also one of the easiest, so it is popular with hikers and campers.  It is also popular because there are so many ways to do the track.  You can do any combination of tramping, kayaking, and taking a water taxi to see the park in different ways.  I didn’t want to be out there at dusk, so I just headed about an hour in and an hour out.  Abel Tasman is part of Golden Bay, so named for its golden beaches.  The rocks that make up this part of the land are mostly granite and sandstone, so they form the traditional sand colour with very fine beaches.

Wednesday I was booked to do a full-day sea kayaking trip.  This was an amazing day for being on the water.  I really love kayaking; I love being on the water, and paddling through the water, and being able to look out over the horizon and be level with the water.  We had a small group.  It was me, an elderly Canadian couple, and a younger couple from the Netherlands, as well as our official guide and a guide-in-training.  We took a water taxi to Torrent Bay and then got in kayaks there.  I was in a double kayaking with the guide-in-training, a 21 year old girl named Sanne who moved here from the Netherlands about two years ago.  I enjoyed sharing a kayak with her because she talked often and was very friendly and open.  We kayaked around a couple of bays and rocks, including a small island where fur seals liked to hang out in the sun.  There were even a couple playing around in the water as we paddled past.  The sun was shining, the water was a deep green, and there was little wind to impede our kayaks.  The only real swells came from the water taxis as they powered past.

We put in at Mosquito Bay for lunch a little after 1.  Don’t be fooled by the name; I think it was named such so that it would keep everyone else away.  Lunch was included in this little excursion, and you would not believe what a good lunch it was.  We had apples, apple juice, tea, coffee, banana bread, kababs (think pita bread with beef and Turkish salad), chocolate, and more.  These kayaks held so much!  We even had a little gas grill!  Anyways, we hung around for awhile, exploring and eating and enjoying the sunshine.  KP, our half-Maori guide, was waiting for more of the tide to come in before we took off.  The tides in Abel Tasman are amazing.  They go out for a long ways, and when high tide comes in, it forms all kinds of lagoons you would never realize are there.  Case in point: during my explorations, I found a large sandy area around the backside of the bay.  When we left, the tide had come in enough to flood it deep enough to kayak in!

The wind had picked up in the afternoon, so that combined with the water taxis’ wakes made the water a bit choppier.  Turns out this was just what KP had in mind.  We kayaked out to the fur seal island again, but this time we went on the ocean side and all came together, side-by-side, to form a raft shape.  KP pulled out a giant sail, which we held up by the paddles, and we sailed back to Torrent Bay!  It was very relaxing.  I was in the front of my kayak holding on to the front of the one next to me, which of course meant that I was splashed a lot as we cut through the waves.  I got to sit back and enjoy the sunshine and conversation with the other kayakers, though.  

We had a bit of a wait when we got back to Torrent Bay, but that wasn’t too bad as I didn’t have anything else planned for the evening.  The water taxis were remarkably understaffed to handle transporting all the kayakers back to Marahau.  This is getting into the high season for tourists, so the water taxis should have been more prepared.  There were a lot of kayakers, but my guide was really good and always steered us clear of the pack.

That evening was a lazy evening with dinner, a walk on the sand dunes, my book, and chatting with the other backpackers in the hostel.  You can meet some extraordinary people as your travel around.  I finally met someone with that strong north England accent, so north English that it starts to sound almost Irish.  I met several older women who were all travelling alone, even camping alone.  I don’t think I could do that, camp alone.  Let’s be honest, being outside in the dark still creeps me out.

I was leaving the next day for Motueka at 5:30 PM, so I had basically the whole day to explore the park.  The big plan was to take a water taxi up to Torrent  Bay and walk to four hour track back to Marahau, stopping at all the little beaches and cliffs along the way.  I had booked the taxi when I first got to Marahau, so I figured I was all set to go.  I still went, but it wasn’t exactly what I had planned on.  I woke up to rain, and as the morning went on, it started to pour harder and faster.  Needless to say, I was soaked (even with a raincoat) within about 10 minutes of walking the track.  I had decided to cut across Anchorage Bay because it was low tide, but the rain had still started to flood the lagoon.  Also, my jeans just seemed to soak up every drop of moisture I encountered, which was a lot.  There were still some amazing views, and I did enjoy my walk, but the thought “Get me off this bloody trail!” definitely ran through my head once or twice.  I ended up doing the trail in a little over 3 hours.  I wish it hadn’t been raining and I had had a chance to really stop and explore more of it, but there you go.  Of course, my clothes were soaked and I was chilled, so I had to change as soon as I got back to my backpacker’s, but with the constant rain I stayed chilled and a little soaked for the rest of the day.

Motueka was a little bit better.  Let’s be honest, I was glad to leave Marahau when I hopped on the bus.  It had cleared up in Motueka, which made it all enjoyable, and I had a room to myself, which was especially nice.  My backpacker’s was a really good one, but it was fairly far out of town, which meant I needed to track down a ride to go in for dinner.  I caught a ride with two guys heading in to play touch rugby, and then the guy from the office came and picked me up on the way home.  I ate my ‘burger and chups’ in the back living room while catching up on the news (this backpacker’s owners live in a separate section of the hostel).  Then the owners came back, so I talked to them for a little while.  They spent 11 months in ’99-’00 touring around America in a campervan, and we talked about that for awhile.  I also realized that it was Thanksgiving Day, so my Thanksgiving consisted of me walking in the rain and eating a hamburger and fries for dinner.  Yum.

I only stayed in Motueka for the one night and headed off to Collingwood early the next morning.  I was going here to do my horse trekking around the Farewell Spit area.  This was amazing.  I am hard-pressed      to decide which was better, horse trekking or sea kayaking.  Farewell Spit was amazing in that it was practically deserted; none of the hordes of travellers like in Abel Tasman.  The horse trekking was completely awesome.  I love horses, even though I don’t ride too often.  It was me, the guide, and a young couple from Hong Kong.  (Incidentally, the lady was so short she had great difficulty getting on her horse!)  Don’t be confused, this was not just us riding horses around a field or something like that.  We were up on cliffs and running along mountain ridges, sometimes following the trails sheep had cut into the side of the mountains because there was no other way to go.  Farewell Spit is a 26km piece of land that is basically just rising out of the ocean.  We were running the ridges at the beginning of the spit.  It was amazing because it was so remote.  We didn’t see anyone up there, and it didn’t seem like many people came up there, anyway.  We were travelling through sheep country.  The sheep aren’t as scared of the horses, so you can get a lot closer to them than you ever would on foot.  I felt like I was exploring unknown hills in Wales or something like that, but then we would reach a ridge and you could see the sea on both sides.  Sometimes we would find ourselves in deep valleys, and the horses would have to run full-out to get to the top.  It was a great way to spend the better part of the day.

I was driven back into town, so I explored Collingwood a little while.  It is a pleasant settlement.  I really did enjoy its quietness, its small-town simplicity.  I was excited to discover that they had the original Rosy Glow Chocolates, a homemade chocolate company that has a sister store in Nelson (I found out that the store in Nelson is run by the woman’s daughter).  There was a nice beach and some pleasant walkways.  After being so active for four days, I enjoyed a nice sunset overlooking the town with a glass or two of wine.

I had a leisurely time the next morning because my bus didn’t leave until 11 AM, so I hung around the beach reading my book until time to go.  I caught no fewer than three different coaches and transfers back to the Nelson Airport and flew back to the windy, wet, and cold city of Wellington.  Not so good to be back in that kind of ever-changing weather, but lo and behold, I had a surprise waiting for me back home.  Nina had waited for me to come home before going to go see the new Harry Potter movie, so within an hour of arriving home we were heading into town to see the movie.  I enjoyed it so much!  It was legitimately creepy and a bit nerve-racking, and this is from someone who knows exactly what is going to happen!  I am really happy that she waited for me to come home to see it.  We had fun walking down there and then discussing the movie on the way home.  By the time we arrived back, Claudia had come home from her tubing trip, so we all sat down and discussed our trips and watched a movie on TV.  (Meredith is still in China.)  I love having real flatmates again!