Abel Tasman National Park

We had hoped to go standby on the 2:45 pm ferry, but this was not to be.  So we parked in the shade of an overpass at the ferry terminal and read until cars started lining up for the 5pm ferry at 3:30 pm.  It’s a big ferry boat and they seemed to have a pretty careful loading system with 4 lanes of cars channeled on and crew to direct you to your exact parking spot on one of 2 car decks.  The ride over was quite comfortable and we saw some dolphins leaping in front of the boat about an hour into the 3 hour ride.  We got some dinner at the café, a piece of lasagna that was pretty decent.  You get to the Queen Charlotte Islands that form a fringe around the north central part of the South Island about an hour before arriving in Picton, on the South Island.  From there we drove 2 hours to Nelson.  The roads were pretty empty and the driving was easy until you get about a ½ hour from Nelson when they get narrow curvy.  And then when we got to Nelson suddenly there was a ton of traffic.  Jake asked someone in the opposite lane what event had just let out and the guy said it was the outdoor opera.  You can only imagine how Jake felt about the opera letting out slowing our already long day!  Our hotel had left the door open for us literally and bed was very welcome.

We didn’t get to see much of Nelson except for walking a few blocks into town for breakfast.  The hotel recommended The Lambretti, named after the Italian motor scooter.  It was a nice casual place with the standard assortment of breakfast menu items and good coffee.  A little Sunday outdoor market was going on with a motley assortment of second hand items, plants, foods, and some vegetables. 

Wilson Kayaks had left bags for us at the hotel desk, so we sorted out what we would take on our three day hiking/kayaking trip.  Then we drove about 45 minutes to Motueka further up the coast.  We were the first of our group to arrive, the rest were picked up by a shuttle bus.  We all did some further luggage/backpack sorting and picked up a bag lunch.  There were 7 couples in our group, but 4 were only going to be hiking.  Besides us there were two other American couples, one couple more or less our age from Ashland, OR who work as nurses and one younger couple who were in the process of moving from Boston to Denver.  Three of the other couples were British retirees and the last was a couple from Auckland who work for an Australian airline.  Our guides were John, a New Zealander who has worked around the park for 40+ years, and Squid, a young Brit who has worked as a guide seasonally for 3 years.  He and his wife came on a work-holiday visa for 2 years and now they have a temporary work visa as “essential workers” because I guess there aren’t enough experienced NZ guides.

Day one we took a boat ¾ of the way up the park’s coastline and it let us out at Tonga Quarry.  From the quarry we walked 7 km north to Meadowbank Homestead, a lodge on Awaroa Bay.  The walks take you over headlands and along beautiful golden sand beaches. John knows all the plants and showed me a parasitic orchid, the horned orchid that mimics its wasp pollinator, and lots of trees and vines.  He also talked about the effort to control yellow jackets using fipronil bait and control of gorse using introduced mites. The DOC is also killing pines in some areas to encourage regrowth of the native vegetation.  Goats are controlled as well as stoats. 

Meadowbank Homestead had been rebuilt from the original. It is run on solar power and seemed to try to be very eco-friendly.  The land was owned by a family that had settled and tried farming in the 1860s.  After having 9 children the wife tired of living in such an isolated location and she moved into town with the kids and started running a boarding house.  She fell in love with one of the boarders, married him, and had 2 more kids.  But he was a ne’er do well and a drunk.  One day he shot her to death.  Her first husband took in one of her last 2 kids but the other was adopted by another family.  Eventually he found his sister and half siblings again and was accepted by them.  Soap operas are nothing new.  (This was all relayed in a video of vintage still photos after dinner).  Before dinner we took a quick swim in the shallow estuary in front of the house.

Dinner was a communal affair.  You could choose a main course and dessert and everyone got the same side dishes and appetizer (or entrée as they are called here).  The first night was a choice between fish skewers and rack of lamb (the lamb was excellent, served in a rose wine sauce, the fish was overcooked).  Dessert was a very good slice of blue cheese with fruit chutney and crackers decorated with a nasturtium flower, or an apricot tart with a thick shortbread crust.  There were enough side dishes to satisfy vegetarians who don’t eat fish.   In the middle of the night we both woke up and went outside to look at the stars.  The sky was very dark and the stars looked so close.  The milky way was so full of stars it seemed hard to pick out any constellations unless they were at the edge of the sky.

The dead tree that appears on the first map of Torrent Bay

The estuary to be crossed

John demonstrating how palm fronds can be used as sleds

Fall River estuary

Day 2 we were served breakfast around 7:30 am, our choice of continental or cooked breakfast. They had set up snacks and sandwich makings that we could fix and bag for our lunch.  We crossed the wide estuary at low tide around 8:15 am wearing our sandals or water shoes, then changed into our hiking shoes for another 7 km walk to Totaranui.  This walked was similar to the previous day but passed through some examples of more mature foredune forest. At Totaranui we caught the ferry boat back down to Tonga Quarry.  Here the walking group separated from the kayak group.  Us kayakers did a quick walk to another nearby beach where our kayaks awaited us. After eating some of our bagged lunch we got safety and paddling instruction and then set off south for about an 8 km kayak to Torrent Bay.  We paddled in and out of a couple beautiful estuaries during the high tide and stopped for a snack on a sand spit.  The wind picked up as the afternoon went on and we were very happy to get around the last headland into Torrent Bay around 5pm. 

Sunset at Torrent Bay lodge

Sunset view at Torrent Bay

Nursing seal pup

Inquisitive south island robin

Split apple rock

The lodge on Torrent Bay is a little simpler but still very nice.  There was another group of 7 people at the end of a 5 day trip at the lodge as well as a young guy who was just spending one night there and not doing any hiking or kayaking.  He had dinner at our table and had been in Wellington for a week volunteering at a conference that his company had sent him too.  They had encouraged him to spend a few extra days vacationing.  He was from Ohio and now lives in South Carolina working for some sort of software company.  He seemed to be at that post college all knowing, eager, confident age.  Dinner choices were salmon or steak, both very good.  Dessert was a cheese plate or pavlova (meringue and cream) with slices of fresh kiwi. 

Sailing the last stretch

Day 3 dawned cloudy and we would be kayaking all day, about 12 km.  We launched as the tide was going out onto calm waters.  We started out across the “mad mile” which was pretty calm but a very rocky shoreline.  From there we went across a short channel to Adele Island, a bird sanctuary that has been cleared of stoats, rats and goats.  We watched 8 week old fur seals play on the rocks as the moms lolled about doing as little as possible (apparently at this stage they are pregnant again, so they are conserving energy between feeding the youngsters and getting ready for the next ones).  We landed at a small beach for a tea break.  Squid set up an umbrella since it was raining and brewed some kanuka leaf tea from leaves he had collected around the lodge.  It’s a very nice tea and apparently loaded with vitamins (no caffeine).  Capt. Cook reportedly favored it over Indian tea after trying it.    From the beach we crossed back over the channel to Apple Tree bay (someone had tried to grow an orchard there but there are no longer any apple trees left) and met up with the hikers for lunch.  We didn’t spend too long over lunch but the couple from Auckland caught the ferry back from there to catch their flight home and the couple from OR decided they had had enough kayaking and also caught the ferry back to Kaiteriteri where they would wait for us.  So it was down to the Denver couple and us and Squid.  We set off across the wide Marahau Bay and around the headland to Kaiteriteri.  The wind started to pick up as we reached the final headland, so we rafted up on either side of Squid’s kayak in the rolling sea and he got out a big square sale.  2 corners were tied with ropes to Jake and Johnnie’s paddles and Katie and I held onto the front corner straps.  It made a very effective sail and we made good time all the way into the Bay.  Katie got soaked though being on the windward side and I guess it was quite an effort to hold the paddles upright with the pressure on the sail. 

In Kaiteriteri (which means food very rapidly in Maori) we had time to change clothes and get a cup of coffee at a café before the bus picked us up to take us back to our car and the office.  We repacked and said our final farewells to our companions).  Jake and I didn’t have far to go as we were staying in Motueka at the Equestrian Lodge Motel for the night.  It was a nice place and our accommodation actually had 3 rooms.  So we could spread out our luggage, use the washer and dryer, and repack in comfort.  We had a nice dinner of fried fish and salad and NZ pinot gris for me at Elevation a few blocks away and restocked for breakfast at the New World supermarket