Truly a Great Walk
A day-by-day on the Abel Tasman Coast Track and lots of photos!
Hello!!
Hope this blog post finds you in a spell of good weather! Fresh off of our departure from the lodge, we decided to embark on completing our first Great Walk by hiking the Abel Tasman Coast Track. New Zealand has a series of trails that they call the "Great Walks,” and we’d been itching to do one. Famously beautiful trails, these "walks'' are often the must-dos for New Zealand trampers (hikers). They're not really "walks," as most of them can be multi-day backpacking hikes. They're also, however, not on the scale of major through-hikes like the Pacific Crest Trail or Appalachian Trail. They’re just the most "iconic" ones, and therefore often really hard to book. It's a fun question to think about what the U.S. "Great Walks" would be! Leave a note on what hikes you think should make that list!
Planning for the walk was unique because we had to time both the tides and the (water) taxis. As a national park, Abel Tasman is really unique because it's so coastal! You can do a four day hike into pretty remote parts, but by winding up at a beachhead you can be picked up by boat. It was cool to see day tourists being dropped off along the way, as it felt like a good mixture of preservation and accessibility. The trail is also a bit of a “choose your own adventure.” There are many different camping/hut options along the way, and the ferries don’t go to all of them, so there isn’t necessarily a single standard approach.
As for the tides, there are parts of the trek that you have to time right to walk across the tidal flats. One part of the track is only passable at low tide, and even then you have to wade through it like a river. We both agreed mucking through it in our bare feet ended up being one of the most memorable parts of the hike.
Once we had booked our sites, we just had to get together some backpacking meals, re-up on water purification tablets, and load up our gear! Both Rachel and I were surprised that this would probably be our longest backpacking trip, because it seems like we would have done something like this before in Colorado! It was great that we both felt prepared going into it, and we were not disappointed!
Day 0: Preparing and reparing!
After realizing that we did not want to be unpaid laborers in a lodge and doing some planning, we hit the open road! Goldie, our beloved van, had passed its Warrant of Fitness, so we drove up the Ruby Coast towards the park. Along the way, we stopped in the charming, small town of Motueka! We stopped in a few bakeries and small shops. We also made a point to stop at a public library, as we’ve really been relying on them with living in the van! Incredible stroke of luck that we did because there was a "Repair Cafe'' going on!
If you have not heard of this amazing concept, let me introduce you to what has become one of my favorite things! A repair cafe is when a group of volunteers who have handy-people skills gather, and the public can bring in items to be fixed that might have gone to waste! Need an old kitchen knife sharpened, head to this table. Need a shirt repaired, oh there's a duo of helpers for that, head over to their sewing machine. Just happen to be two happy Americans who need a campervan sink fixed, well we can see about that! The best thing, besides the circular economy as a solution to hyperconsumption, was that there was free coffee! Truly a great thing to stumble upon. It felt very in the spirit of a tea monk in Becky Chambers’s “Psalm for the Wild-Built,” a novella I highly recommend if you’re looking for something cozy, a book explicitly dedicated to “anyone who could use a break.”
We spent the rest of the day picking up supplies and then drove up to a freedom camping spot (New Zealand’s version of dispersed camping – typically first come, first served parking lots for campervans) at nearby Kahurangi National Park.
Day 1: Hitting the Trail!
Our hiking plan had us averaging about eight miles (estimated four hours) a day. Compared to Colorado, there was not a lot of elevation gain, though as the Park Service reminds us: trails often look more flat on the map. A mini-luxury was that because we were not worried about going above treeline, we could have a leisurely noonday start compared to the 4am wake ups that come with summiting 14ers.
Quickly we realized why this hike would be extraordinary. It was going to take us miles along pretty much undeveloped coast. Water ranging from the brightest blues to deep turquoise splashed on white sandy beaches. Fern and pine intertwined to create cool forest groves and birdsong filled the air. A large section was recently turned from private to public land by a collective effort of 40,000 New Zealanders.
After a few quick adjustments to my pack in order to not sound like a jangly, old-timey prospector, we soon hit our stride! The first day passed quickly, and we descended down to our first campsite known as Anchorage. Aptly named, as a few sailboats were nestled in the bay. The campsite was just a quick hop down to a long beach where one side was a low tide sandbar and the other side had some mossy coastal caves. I spotted a stingray in the shallows, and the night was full of bird calls I had never heard before.
It was also home, as we soon found out most campsites would be, to an active flock of weka, also known as the Maori hen. In a land full of unique birds, the weka might look a bit plain with its round body and brown plumage. But I think wekas might have one of the strongest personalities I've seen in the animal kingdom. They can only be described as scampish and sly. They often seem like they are playing a large game of capture the flag, the flag being whatever tasty food you might have. If you shoo one away, it simply backs up a few paces and plots its next approach. More tactical and terrestrial, they don't seem as mindless as seagulls. I found out that I couldn't help but root for them. Though I'm also on the bull’s side during a bullfight.
We got to the campsite around mid-afternoon, and spent a lovely time swimming (though it was very cold), attempting to do a watercolor painting of our campsite (I did get better each day– it helps if you start at a low bar!), playing cribbage, and reading (Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” for me, and a New Zealand classic “The Bone People” for Rachel). We both agreed getting to savor a book during a long camping trip makes it well worth the added weight, and the book is forever linked with the time. After a nice meal of backpacking pasta, we went off to sleep early.
Day 2: Tides: 1, Boats: 0 / Weka: 1, Us: 1
I tend to wake up early while camping, so I enjoyed a nice cup of instant coffee (another little luxury) and a walk on the beach before people were up and about! Once again, we only had about four hours of hiking planned, so could start midday.
Our late morning turned out to be the perfect move, as we were able to catch low tide and thus walk across the tidal flats, cutting about an hour (and a lot of elevation) from our route. I've never quite seen something quite like our walk across the mud flats. Best nature sighting of the day was seeing a cormorant (an aquatic diving bird) enjoy a well earned meal from a riverbed as we waded through! There was one very bizarre part where we walked past two boats that were completely out of the water but would soon be afloat when the tide came in.
Great conversation passed the time and we stumbled upon a game that I'm calling "A Taylor of Two Swifties" where you propose two random things and the other person decides which one is more likely for Taylor Swift to have done. Bonus points if you can stumble on two completely unrelated things that the other person thinks are equally likely. My favorite one was "Do you think it's more likely that Taylor Swift has fired a hand-gun or has personally done light coding in an Excel document?” What do y'all think?
With these profound questions in mind, we were soon at our beautiful beach campsite at Barks Bay.
A weka did manage to pull one past us and punched a hole through our granola bag, even while we were watching it! If there is a weka ESPN I think that bird would have made the play of the week (though Rachel did manage to snag it back before it was too late). There was a bit of rain that night but our tent stayed dry!
Day 3: Onwards towards the Hut!
Waking up and feeling sore, we treated ourselves to a nice savory breakfast of backpacking dahl. This day was our longest hike, but good weather and stunning vistas greeted us at every turn. We did take a detour to check out a fabled pizza restaurant. While the pizza was closed on weekdays, our digression was still rewarded with other food at the upscale lodge. It was a funny mix of people who had clearly stumbled out of the bush (like us) and more posh travelers staying at the lodge.
We didn't go across the tidal flats, as we thought we had missed the tidal window. We learned that we could have made it and while that would have saved us some steep uphill, we would have also missed the best overlook on the trail. After a few more uphills and downhills we reached our hut!
Part of the reason why the Great Walks are so hard to book is because of the huts! They fill up fast, and it's often hard to get multiple days in huts lined up if you don't book early. That didn't stop Rachel from cracking the code though. We’ve noticed that tent camping seems somewhat less popular in New Zealand, maybe due to the fact that people are used to huts and campervans. Therefore, we could easily book four nights on the trail in a couple days' notice by camping most of the nights. But we did manage to snag one hut at Awaroa!
The hut was a really nice bunkhouse with an outdoor toilet, a main gathering/cooking room and a couple of sleeping rooms. We grabbed two spots in the main room on top bunk. The beds were nestled right next to each other with only one ladder connecting the top and bottom levels. It made going to the bathroom in the night a bit tricky, but after a tent it seemed like a luxury suite. The setup felt very similar to the bunkhouse on Pikes Peak we stayed in last summer with our friends! We fell asleep with stirfry in our bellies and the pleasant sounds of conversations around the hut.
Day 4: On the Tide’s Time
The Awaroa hut was in a unique location, as it was right before the only spot on the trail that you had to cross at low tide, which in our case wasn’t until afternoon. We chatted with our fellow travelers as we bided our time. There’s something about having a shared need to wait that can create a friendly feeling among people, and we enjoyed the time for small talk and cards.
I think we had planned the hike out really well, as we only had 2 hours of hiking and didn't have a ferry to catch. You could tell that some people going further north had stricter schedules and were keeping a close eye on the clock. The first crossing became possible around 12:30 and we went with them, still wading in water up to our knees at some points!
Getting into the campsite at Totoranui felt a bit anticlimactic as this was a carpark for the other side of the park. However, it was a lovely beach, and we enjoyed seeing the sun set over the ocean. We settled in for the night and, whether from quality or four days in the woods, had a carbonara dish that was the best meal of the trip!
Day 5: Back Home!
Any anti-climactic feelings were soon brushed aside by our taxi pick up! We had packed up camp and were relaxing on the beach when the boat came in. The waves were rough enough that the small craft kept getting pushed back into the water. A dad, daughter, and son tried to hold down the anchor while passengers got off. One of the smaller children was not having it and hit the beach crying while his two siblings followed, hooting in excitement. It's not every day you see a family’s "core memories" being made in real time, and it brought on nostalgic feelings for my childhood vacations.
We took our shoes off and waded aboard, greeted by the very friendly skipper Glenn! Glenn had grown up in the area, helped build the landing beach with a backhoe in his youth, and worked as a skipper for 20 years when he wasn't doing mining work in Australia. As we cruised the hour back to our starting point, both Rachel and I were struck by how far we had hiked! Truly a great walk!
We treated ourselves to lunch, followed by some hot showers at the rec center as we basked in the joy of completing our hike! Goldie really does feel like home base now, and we made a great dinner with fresh produce we picked up at multiple farmstands on the way back to Nelson. We also had a pint of some of the tastiest strawberries we have had! Truly a wonderful experience.
Where to next??
Good question! We stuck around Nelson for the weekend and volunteered with a local mountain bike race. We also attended some cool shows and creative workshops as part of Nelson's Fringe Festival (we have loved these low-cost, alternative arts festivals where anyone can sign up to perform!) After that, we started applying for jobs and considering another road trip, this time over Arthur’s Pass! Things move pretty quickly while traveling, so more soon on living in the campervan full-time and where we’ve ended up!