Abel Tasman National Park

To see the most of Abel Tasman National Park, we opted for a tour that involved a combination of walking, kayaking and riding water taxis. Due to some choppy weather in the morning, our tour operator decided to switch up the usual order of activities - this meant we would walk in the morning and kayak after lunch. We started off piling into a water taxi that was on a trailer, pulled by a tractor. The tractor drove us down the road and backed our boat in at the boat ramp. We then had an exciting, bumpy ride out to Anchorage beach where we started our walk along the Abel Tasman Coastal Track.

The walk was beautiful - passing through fairly densely forested paths, with peeks out to beautiful beaches below. There are apparently 70 different types of ferns that grow here and it really has a rainforest/jungle vibe. One of the coolest features was a swing bridge over a gorge. We also saw several birds we learned are called wetas. They are a flightless bird and pretty bold - even snagging a bag of cashews from one of our group members at lunch later. They also have a lot of traps set up along the trail to catch invasive predators (rodents and hornets) that threaten the native species.

We then met up with the rest of our group for lunch at Bark Bay. After what was a pretty delicious lunch - especially after having been shoved into a kayak the whole morning - we got situated in our kayak to see some more of the park by water. We saw several varieties of birds and some neat rock formations as we kayaked along the coast. We then headed to Tonga island to see the fur seals! After watching them roll around in the water and sun themselves on rocks, we headed into shore at Onetahuti Bay for a quick swim before boarding a water taxi back to Marahau.

The process for bringing all the kayaks back was fascinating and I was surprised they all stayed attached to the water taxi on our speedy return. Returning at low tide, it was more obvious why we were transported by tractor in the morning as tractors are needed to drive into the water to retrieve the water taxis and haul them up the boat launch.

We took a bunch of photos on the underwater camera for this outing, which I'll have Keanan add to this post :)Read more