The Abel Tasman National Park is probably one of the most beautiful places of the South Island, if not the whole of New Zealand. It is located at the north west of the South Island and full of natural hilly bushland, has plenty of bays, coves and small islands with wonderful golden sandy beaches and crystal-clear blue sea. It's the definition of paradise. Along the coast line, there are a lot of camping sites (tents of course, as no streets lead into the park) or huts providing shelter over night
The rich golden colour of the sand comes from granite which has eroded over time and shaped the coastline of the Abel Tasman park. And the tides here are crazy, at some places, the tidal differences are among the greatest in New Zealand, measuring up to 6m. At other places, the tide when it is out, creates huge sandy beaches and empties inland bays completely. In return, tracks from one place to the other, which at high tide might take 1.5 hours, take only 20 minutes at low tide.
When we came here, the weather was beautiful and summerly warm. So the first day we parked our campervan in a camping site at Marahau, which is right at the southern edge of the park, and headed out with the water taxi. Already that came with the first surprise. The pickup point was in front of the camping and the water taxi came on a trailer which was pulled by a tractor. We boarded the boat there and were towed to the ramp down to the sea. But the waterline was a couple 100m out from the edge, it was low tide, so the tractor brought us over the beach and through some puddles to the sea where it released us into the water and headed back again to shore. On the way to Anchorage Bay, the end point of the boat ride, we passed from the Split Apple Rock, a bolder which looks like an apple split in half, and an island with a seal colony where young seal pups were paying in the water. Unfortunately we couldn't get close enough with the boat to get a good look at them. Second suprise was at Anchorage Bay, there was no quay to disembark, so we had to get rid of shoes and roll up the trousers to hop off the boat and walk the last steps ashore.
From Anchorage Bay we took the Abel Tasman Coast Track back towards Marahau. The track was 12 km long and estimated at about 4 hours. It took us through the bushland and past coves and beaches. With some side tracks to the beaches and lookouts along the way, some of them good, others less, we reached the camping at Marahau pretty exhausted and with some blisters, after roughly 4.5 hours, and just before the sun set.
The next day we had a guided kayak tour on our schedule. This time, being still early in the morning, the tide was high and the water taxi was dropped off directly at the ramp. We headed out towards Onetahuti Beach, with the kayaks loaded on the back of the taxi. At the beach we got an introduction about the kayaks, such as how to steer, how to enter and how to paddle. We were 9 people plus the guide and were grouped in teams of 2 with double kayaks, or as their nickname here is: divorce boats. To dispel your fears already, even though Katerina and me shared the same kayak, we don't have to file a divorce yet. The kayaks also had a clever Kiwi invention on board, which is a rudder at the back that can be operated by the Navigator (the person sitting at the back) with his feet. This makes manuvering so much easier than with the paddles alone! Once everyone was in their kayaks and out on the sea we headed to Tonga Island. This island hosts a seal colony, and at this time of the year, the pups are young an energetic. Once we arrived, and after a bit of time for them to get used to us, they came out to play amongst us. They were quite curious and came really close to us, diving under the kayaks, checking out what we are doing, some even going as far as trying to climb on board! They were sooo cute and we got quite some video footage, above and under water, but sadly we had to leave them again.
So we headed south along the coast until we came to Mosquito Bay where we had a picnic lunch on the beach. According to our guide, if he said so only to dispel our fears or not aside, the name was not given because of the many mosquitos, but so as to discourage the visitors from coming to the beach and keeping it from overcrowding. We had time for a swim and the exploration of a cave before we continued again. We passed another seal colony on the way and watch some more seal pups playing. Not in as close proximity as the first, but they were just as cute.
Once we came close to Anchorage Bay, we were a bit tired, and a bit early, so we attempted kayak sailing. This was done by moving all the kayaks alongside each other to form a raft. Then the people at the back edge were holding the top part of sail up with their paddles and the ones at the front were holding the bottom part, thus creating a sail to catch the wind. We did manage to catch some wind and move forward, but to be honest, paddling would have been faster! But it was fun nevertheless.
At Anchorage Bay we were picked up again by the water taxi and brought back to Marahau. Since it was low tide again, the tractor was waiting with the trailer out on the beach for us. You could see they had done their job a couple of times already, because before you could blink the boat was on the trailer and the tractor pulled us out to the beach and back ashore.
On the last day of our stay at the Abel Tasman park we drove with the campervan to Takaka Hill and entered the park from the east side. There we went for a shorter walk (about 1 hour) through a forest of beeches to a viewpoint on top of a hill. The last part was climbing over rocks shaped by the water for millenias, creating amazing formations and clefts in the rock. But the scariest part, just at the edge of the rocks, the hill fell steeply down for a couple hundred meters affording us with a spectacular view over the valley below.