Walking in the wet - Abel Tasman Coastal Track

New Zealand is all about the outdoors, especially when hiking, or tramping as the Kiwis say. The country even has 9 Great Walks. These are multi day hiking trails, which supposedly have the bast views and divers landscapes.

Now, we are by no means avid walkers, but we felt like we at least had to try to do one of these trails. I mean, being in the country for almost two months, and not do one of the walks....? That's like missing out on the essentials of the country.

Start of the Abel Tasman from Maharou

After done online searching, we decided to walk the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. We chose this one for several reasons:

• Supposedly it's the easiest of the Great Walks, so manageable for leisurely walkers. 
• It's very accessible, so if you decide you cannot take it anymore, you can even decide to take a water taxi out.
• You walk a trail from hut to hut, where you spend the night. So the distance between two huts determines how far you have to walk each day. The Abel Tasman has 'extra' huts, so you can chose to walk the whole track in 3,4 or 5 days. (This whole track is 60km.)
• This area usually has really good weather: one of the sunniest parts of the country.

View over Tinline Bay

Because the huts have limited space, you have to book them before you start. By the time we thought about booking them, some of them were already fully booked. So this limited our options, both in length and dates. An attentive option would be you camp along the trail, but then we'd have to hire (and carry!) camping gear too. That's a bit too hardcore for me.

We would walk 3 days, from Marahau to Awaroa, staying 2 night in huts. 

Because the trails are all about nature, you can't buy anything en route. You have to carry all your food , clothing and sleeping gear with you.

The huts have drinking water, flushing toilets and cold showers. No heating or electricity, but some sort of heating would be available.

Walking the first day

At our hostel we arranged for a water taxi to pick us up at Awaroa on day 3, and hired an extra sleeping bag (we travel with just one) because the nights get pretty cold!

We headed out on the 6th of November. Just as one of the infrequent bad weather fronts rolled in... Well , if you let the rain get yo you, you can't do anything in New Zealand! But look at the sky in that first photo, imagine that the start of you three day walk....

Start of day 2, Drizzle at Anchorage Bay

On that first day we walked just over 13km. Most of it in lovely weather, and those views... Simply amazing. But our bags were pretty heavy, were of used to more than a day pack. And there were a couple of pretty steep climbs that day. 

We stopped for lunch at Appletree Bay, a lovely little cove. But the tide rose very quickly, so we climbed up again and walked to the hut at Achorage. The first real showers started after lunch, and about 20 minutes before we got to the hut it started to storm. We were utterly soaked by the time we reached the hut. 

The rain stopped about half an hour after we got there... So we spend a lovely few hours sitting in the sun. As soon as the rain stopped, the birds came out. A few ducks, some quail and even a weka! 

Day 2: rain

Achorage hut had 4 separate door rooms, with 4 bunks each (sleeping 8 per room). The matresses were plastic wrapped foam. Not the most comfortable ever. But hey, we weren't doing this for comfort.

Someone lights the fire, we rinsed our socks and shirt, and hung our clothes next to the fire to dry.

Our dinner consisted of a salad with avocado and a tin of teriyaki chicken each. Dessert was an energy bar. 

The huts don't have cooking facilities and we figured that hiring and carrying a portable gas stove was too much of a hassle. 

We had some nice chats that evening, prepared our overnight oats, and by nine o'clock everyone was in bed!

Start of day 3 at Bark Bay

We were looking forward to day 2, it was forcast to be a lovely sunny day, and our pack would be not as heavy.

Imagine our deception when we woke up to the sound of rain... 

We took our time eating our oats (that had turned out quite nice!) and staring out the window. Around 10 we figured we might as well start, it didn't get any sunnier as far as we could tell. And we were right unfortunately.

It rained all day long. We didn't stop for lunch, because we were quite sure our rice cake would fall apart from the moisture. 

A good thing that even in the rain, the track is gorgeous. But of course we would have preferred some more sunshine.

A tui, one of the most common birds on the track.

We reached Bark Bay hut at around 2pm, having walked again 13km. Since it had been such lovely weather (ahem) we had decided to take the high tide route and a detour to Cleopatra Pool.

But we did gave a lot of fun that afternoon in the hut. We chatted and laughed with some of the other walkers. Taking turns of making fun of each other's food turns out to be a good way to pass the time. (Our dinner was ready cooked rice, mustard tinned chicken, red peppers and tinned olives.)

Bark Bay hut was a little more basic than Anchorage: the same plastic matresses, but this time in 2 bed rooms, each sleeping 14 people in platform bunks. What is a platform bunk? Two platforms above each other, both with 7  matresses, right next to each other. It has been a while since I've slept that close to a stranger...

The creek just before Tonga Quarry

But what a nice surprise on day 3. We had given up hope, but the sun made it at last! What a gorgeous day it was. We had only 10km to walk today, and our pack was almost empty.

We saw so many birds that day and the sunlight made all the views just made all the little creeks glitter. Because of the rainy days the waterfalls and creeks were tumbeling.

Day 3: sun at Onetahuti Beach

At Onetahuti Beach we had a break, we watched the oystercatchers and red billed gulls at the beach, and staring at the sea, we even saw some seals in the water!

After Onetahuti we walked through an estuary and then got ready for our last hike uphill. Walking down we realised we were very early for our water taxi. We had booked a 3pm taxi, and we arrived at noon. We decided to walk to the beach, just in time to see the earlier water taxi arrive! 

We stepped aboard and 1,5 hours later we were back where we started.

Boat ride back