{"id":1328,"date":"2011-01-30T22:24:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T06:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2011-01-30T22:24:35","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T06:24:35","slug":"new-zealand-abel-tasman-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1328","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand: Abel Tasman National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We arrived in the South Island! We were in search of sun, and we found it!\u00a0 There was much rejoicing!\u00a0 After our change of plans to come to the South Island a day early, we also decided to go visit one of the national parks we had written off due to lack of time, Abel Tasman National Park<\/a>.\u00a0 It was also pretty much the sunniest place in the whole country that day as well, so we lucked out.\u00a0 We left Picton in the morning, took a reasonably quick detour through Nelson and headed up the coast to Abel Tasman.\u00a0 This national park is predominantly coastal, and the highlight of the park is the Coast Track, which is considered one of New Zealand’s “great walks”.\u00a0\u00a0These “great walks” are\u00a0several\u00a0multi-day backpacks through some of the country’s most scenic natural areas.\u00a0 We were able to complete the first day of the walk, camp on the beach overnight, and take a water taxi back to our starting point the next day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We started the hike in the afternoon, with the sun finally shining down on our very grateful heads.\u00a0 My back was acting up in a major way, so Tom, being the gentleman\/pack animal\u00a0that he is, took most of the load for our overnight, leaving me only burdened with my camera bag and gigantic sun hat.\u00a0 Honestly, the thing has it’s own zipcode.\u00a0 The trail starts out crossing a tidal flat, then starts to gradually climb up onto the headlands overlooking the Marlborough Sounds.\u00a0 The trail undulates up and down\u00a0over the headlands, and turns inland and back towards the sea with the contours created by the many streams that cross the track.\u00a0 Since the trail is so well traveled, it is in incredible shape, with very stout bridges and well maintained drainage systems for the *ahem* occasional rain shower.\u00a0 We also saw\u00a0some of the flora that is\u00a0unique to\u00a0New\u00a0Zealand, such as the\u00a0fern tree.\u00a0 This plant is exactly what it claims to be.\u00a0 It is a\u00a0fern that grew up to be a tree.\u00a0 They have enormous fronds and a woody trunk, but at the top, they’re all fern.\u00a0 Weird.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Since trail descriptions in New Zealand rarely include elevation gain, we were unsure how long it would take us to hike the 12km to the first hut along the walk.\u00a0 We decided instead to camp at Akerston Bay, a small campsite about 8km along the trail.\u00a0 In hindsight, there was no real elevation to speak of, and we completed our hike for the day quickly, but it simply gave us more time to enjoy our beautiful beachfront campsite.\u00a0 The site has space for 3 tents, but luckily there were only one other French couple and ourselves there for the night.\u00a0 Yay private beach!\u00a0 Tom swam in the ocean, because when given a body of water, he will swim in it, no matter how cold, or lacking in fresh water to bathe the situation may be.\u00a0 I puttered around oohing and ahhhing over our breathtaking surroundings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Eventually we retreated back up into the wooded area beside the beach to make dinner at the picnic table and let the other couple have some “beach time”.\u00a0 They came wandering up a few minutes later though to ask if we were able to help them with their stove.\u00a0 They had unknowingly purchased the wrong type of fuel canister for their type of stove, so we let them use ours to make their dinner once we were done.\u00a0 After dinner, it had become completely dark, and we decided to go down to the beach and look at the stars.\u00a0 Since we were so far from any major towns or cities, there was very little light pollution, and the stars where quite brilliant.\u00a0 It was our first really clear night since arriving in New Zealand, so it was amazing to see how different the constellations were in the Southern Hemisphere.\u00a0 We did see the Southern Cross, and sang the song as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0The highlight of the evening walk, however, was while we were sitting in the darkness with headlamps off, looking at the stars, we heard a wet flapping sound coming from the ocean.\u00a0 It continued and got closer.\u00a0 I turned my headlamp on, just in time to see a little blue penguin scuttle up the little stream that runs from the woods to the ocean, and right into the woods themselves!\u00a0 We visited a blue penguin colony later on the trip, and learned that this little guy probably had his nest in the rocks right inside the woods, and that he was returning to his nest for the night.\u00a0 I really like penguins, and have never seen one in the wild, so it was a truly unique experience.\u00a0 Tom tried to get a few photos, but the little penguin was a bit skittish, so they look more like Bigfoot photos than anything else.\u00a0 Hopefully we didn’t traumatize the poor thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The next morning, we hiked the last 2km to Anchorage, where the first hut of the walk is located.\u00a0 We had arranged for our water taxi to pick us up at 1:30, but we arrived much earlier than anticipated.\u00a0 We did a short hike from the hut up to an overlook and down to another small beach and back, but the weather was changing, and we were ready to get off the beach.\u00a0 We hid up at the hut while showers rolled in and out, and Tom would rush down the beach every time a water taxi would come, to see if we could catch a ride back early.\u00a0 Eventually, we were able to hitch a ride back with one of the earlier taxis.\u00a0 The water was choppy, so I was focused on trying not to be sick, while Tom popped around taking photos.\u00a0 We had to make a few stops on the way back, and he was eventually told to sit down by the driver.\u00a0 There was a moment of hilarity when we arrived back at the boat ramp and the driver drove the boat up the ramp onto the boat trailer attached to a tractor.\u00a0 The same driver then proceeded to hop out<\/em> and drive the tractor pulling the boat<\/em>\u00a0down the street with us still in it.<\/em>\u00a0 Now, I’ve been in some strange transportation situations, but never have I ridden in a boat being pulled down the street by a tractor.\u00a0 This was a new one for me.<\/p>\n

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We finally made it back to the water taxi outfitter and Tom fetched our rental car from the parking lot over by the trail head.\u00a0 We weren’t too sunburnt, but the vitamin D certainly did us good.\u00a0 We were now ready for the long drive down to Arthur’s Pass National Park for Christmas Eve!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 We arrived in the South Island! We were in search of sun, and we found it!\u00a0 There was much rejoicing!\u00a0 After our change of…<\/p>\n

Continue readingNew Zealand: Abel Tasman National Park<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15,17,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiking","category-life","category-new-zealand","category-travel","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1387,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}