Abel Tasman

Eager to go, we set out a sunrise and drove to Marahau where we parked in town and sorted out our water taxi pick up for the end of the trek. We had a 2 kilometre walk from there to the trail head.
With 4 days of storms and bad weather planned we didn't know what to expect. The weather turned out to be excellent except for one hour of rain on day 2. A wicked storm did come along the first night but we were safely in a hut. The trail was very well laid out and groomed which made walking easy. Gravel and dirt for the most part, there were many sandy beach sections. For the next 4 days we wound in, out and around the coast line.

We were surprised when booking that it was apparently hard to do the entire trek in the summer in one continuous trip because there are some many bookings. Another reason we are glad it is the offseason. Bugs were also non-existent for the most part. During the trip we had the company of 4 ladies from the Christchurch hiking club as we stayed at the same hut each night. A couple we over actually around 70 so it was impressive to see them trekking the 18km days with full packs. We enjoyed playing quibbler, a word game with cards, with them one night. They were quite entertaining. Each night we stayed at comfortable huts with fireplaces, bunk beds, cooking areas and fresh water. The huts could hold up to 25 people typically but the most we shared with was 9.

The first day walk took us along many pretty beaches. A short detour took us to Cleopatra’s pool which has a natural water slide which I could not help but trying. The water was frigid so it was quick dip but it was the cleanest I’d been in days.

Day 2 was really short and we got to camp early. To fill the time I decided to make some kindling for the fire and accidently cut the tip of my thumb off with my knife. It was pretty good wound that went clean through and took a couple millimetres off the tip. I quickly bandaged it up. It didn’t bleed too much which was good and as luck would have it one of the other campers was a doctor and took a look at it the next morning and didn’t think stitches would do much better with the location of the wound. Based on that assessment and that it didn’t look infected, we decided to finish the hike.

One interesting aspect of this hike is that you had to take in account tides for certain section. For example to cross one bay we had to wait for low tide or else the trail was inaccessible. We had one of these crossings on the morning of day 3 and had to set out early to cross the bay. The bay hadn’t completely dried so we had to walk barefoot through ankle deep water in sections. The crossing wasn’t very long only 500m but if you arrived at the wrong time you were stuck. The rest of day 3 was more coastal walking with a side track to Separation Point a scenic lookout. We ended up at this old historic house from the 1890s that was turned into Whariwharangi hut. It was like staying in an old farm house. I really enjoyed it.

The final day took us inland as we looped back over a 400m summit to our taxi pick up location. The water taxi was fun and put a nice finishing touch on the trip as we motored along the entire coast we had just walked. In total we walked about 60km.Read more