I just spent the last two full days in Abel Tasman National Park. This has been my favorite part of the trip thus far ~ so beautiful here. It is an absolutely stunning park situated along the Tasman Bay and has a coastal track that runs along its entire length that takes 3-5 days to complete if you were to walk the whole thing. I have been to many beautiful coastal spots in my life (including Big Sur, The Cabot Trail in Cape Breton, and Acadia) but to me this far surpasses these other spots.
The gateway to Abel Tasman National Park is Marahau, a town 20 minutes beyond where I am staying in Motueka. Marahau has many different water taxis and kayaking companies that, for different fees, take you to different locations and drop you off. You then can pick a time and a location from the schedule to be picked back up. It quite literally runs like clockwork! Very impressive system they have going!
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| View from water taxi |
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| View from water taxi |
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| Traveling via water taxi |
Way back on day one of this trip (back in Akaroa) I made a friend at a cafe ~ Julian. Julian epitomizes kiwi hospitality! We struck up a conversation as I was blogging to you, and he asked me to show him how to blog. In exchange, Julian then told me he used to be a sea kayak guide in Abel Tasman, and he proceeded to help me plan and arrange my two days in the park. He quite literally searched the internet and put together two perfect days for me, and even called both the kayak company and water taxi company to set them up for me. He also gave me his brother’s phone number for when I am in Wanaka and told me his brother is a river guide there and he would take me out on the water if I gave him a call. Kiwis are SO NICE!!!
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| Anchorage Bay |
The first day I had a guided sea kayaking adventure. The weather was not the greatest this day and the water was tumultuous!! We had to reroute our planned excursion and ended up kayaking the opposite direction of our planned route to go with the wind. We were dropped with our guide via water taxi at “The Anchorage” (a popular spot to drop anchor), and kayaked from Anchorage Bay up to Bark Bay.
We had a few stops along the way including a mid morning stop where we kayakers then hiked to Cleopatra’s pool and watched hikers take a dip in this natural pool, while our sea kayak guide Ethan quite literally set up an espresso bar and made us lattes & mochas using camping equipment. We returned from our short visit to Cleopatra’s pool, “had a coffee”, and then continued on to explore other coves and islands which had many sea lions and birds. It was really quite fun. It was an all-day adventure and when we got to Bark Bay, Ethan radioed for our taxi to come pick us up and we were brought back to Marahau. A farming tractor then pulled our taxi out of the water as the tide had gone out and we could no longer boat up to the dock.
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| My Kayaking Companions |
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| Sea lions and their babies!! |
(A quick side note about Ethan. Turns out Ethan was born in CA, at age 12 moved and lived in VT near Burke Mountain, and his father used to be a surgeon at DHMC!! SMALL world. For those who worked at DHMC 10+ years ago, i.e. Dan, you likely worked with my sea kayak guide’s father, Dr. Pace, who left DHMC to move to NZ and now works in Greymouth)
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| Ethan, Sea Kayak Guide & Barista |
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| Walk from Mutton Cove to Totaranui |
Day two was a walking day for me. At Julian’s suggestion I took the Aqua Taxi all the way to the most remote drop off spot, Mutton Cove, and had the most amazing walk of my life from Mutton Cove to Totaranui Cove. It was truly spectacular; completely isolated! I think I saw a total of 4 people in the course of 3 hours and had beautiful untouched beaches entirely to myself.
I absolutely loved it here!!!!
I had been scheduled to be picked up at Totaranui Cove early in the afternoon and taken all the way back to Marahau, but given that I still had food, water, and energy, and the weather was turning out to be perfect, I had the taxi boat driver drop me back off at The Anchorage and I walked the remaining 11k+ of the way back to Marahau. It was a lot of walking today! There is a huge difference in walking the remote section versus the well-traveled section ~ should you ever decide to come here, pick the furthest drop off! Its well worth the extra money and distance!!
Tomorrow I head back to Nelson for a day of shopping!
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