Spoiled in the Sand: Adventures in Abel Tasman National Park

NZ Family Adventures: Days 11-17

The beach-side spoiling actually starts two days before Abel Tasman National Park when the bus pulls up to our AirBnB in Mapua, which is a small coastal town about half an hour from Nelson in the Tasman Bay. Not only is it beach front with a beautiful deck and soft sand, but it is so close to the Mapua Wharf that the tiny Mapua ferry anchors only a few yards from the our back door. Bright, airy and ridiculously sunny, mom makes the executive decision to do nothing. The girls don our swim suits, grab our books, and lay claim to the loungers in the sand. No one wants to leave the house for dinner so while the boys head out to try the brewery next door, mom also tasks them with getting groceries so we can cook our own feast later.

And then, bliss…

The next day was supposed to be biking to wineries nearby, but the bike rental company lets us know that all but one of those wineries is actually closed on Mondays. Mondays, we think. What are Mondays? Days of the week don’t exist when on vacation.

Instead, we take the little Mapua ferry over to Rabbit Island and get on the Great Taste Trail headed toward Nelson. For an hour we bike through bush, along the coast line, over bridges, and through parks. It’s so beautiful and serene and calm. Oh, and did I mention we are on ebikes!

We decide to stop at a small winery that is open on Mondays called Te Mania. While I’m not much of a wine expert, nor a huge wine drinker, it is a lovely area, a good rest break (because I am so tired from pedaling my ebike on all that flat ground), and the host is very kind and knowledgeable. An hour later, as we’re poised to leave, the back tire of my bike is completely flat. Dad blows it back up and we head three minutes down the road to a little cafe called The Grape Escape, but the tire is flat again by the time lunch is over.

The Mapua ferry runs at ten past from 10:10am to 5:10pm, but the bike rental shop closes at 5 so we need to be on the 4:10 ferry. It’s 3:05 and it took us an hour and ten minutes to get here, but we were dilly-dallying. And we’d only been on setting 1 for electric assist. Dad sends Mike, Sandee, and mom off on their bikes to try to make the 4:10 ferry, then manages to replace the tube in my back tire in about 8 minutes. I’m no help as my expertise only lies with car tires thus far.

But we’re off too at about 3:14, racing to catch the ferry. I’ve got my ebike setting turned up to 3 out of 4 and I feel invincible, racing down the straight aways. Of course, the path is gravel in many places and there are quite a few turns. Dad takes them at the speed of light, but I’m much more cautious.

Crossing the bridge to Rabbit Island, the track turns to hard dirt with the occasional patch of loose sand. I almost go down in one of the long sand patches, but manage to stay on the bike. We’re racing, cruising. The ride would have been more relaxed minus the tire incident, but having a goal and racing against the clock is far more fun!

And, of course, we make it to the ferry pick-up spot with five minutes to spare.

There’s some more time to relax for the evening and Mom and I go for a swim, managing to lure the others in the water for a little bit, but we’re obviously the toughest–in first and out last.

The sun sets slow, pastel shades easing into dusk, and we get dinner at the Mapua Wharf, entertained by the local kids riding their bike off the pier.

Though we leave Mapua the next day, it’s for more fun. Months ago mom booked an adventure for us in Abel Tasman National Park–five days of fun and four nights in beautiful lodges with fantastic meals. When we arrive to check in with our water-taxi company, it becomes clear that what we actually signed up for is a guided hike–just like the fancy Milford Track guided hikes I came across. While I’m thrilled for the yummy food and hot showers and comfy beds, I can tell from everyone’s faces that we’re not sure about this guided hike thing with a bunch of…retirees?

I am of a similar age to the guides, and almost everyone else is 60 and over. Suddenly I’m having visions of plodding along the trail, calling ahead every few minutes when a group of hikers wants to pass the slow herd. And I’m in the slow herd.

We get on a big bus and drive to Kaiteriteri, where we offload onto the beach and then onto a large water taxi. The sky is dark and dangerous, wind whips against my face on the top deck, and the swells launch the boat from one to the next, jerky, loud, and stomach-churning. Our group of five huddles around a table inside, trying to eat the lunch we’ve been given as we bounce around like popcorn kernels in a hot pan. As we speed past groups of kayakers paddling furiously on the churning sea, I know I’m not the only one imagining myself out there on the waves in a few days and wondering what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The boat cruises into Tonga Beach and we exit onto the golden sand. It’s a little bit breezy, but the clouds are starting to clear. We gather around the lead guide, Sarah, like a group of school children and she starts to share safety info and instructions. At the end, she hands out maps and instruction booklets to a few groups who have apparently elected to go self-guided. When she’s done, there’s one booklet left in her hand. She seems to give a half shrug and then drag her eyes across the crowd. “Any guided hikers want to be self-guided instead?”

It’s almost like she asked, “Who wants a cherry and chocolate bar?” or “Who wants a goose-down vest?” I’ve never seen my mom’s hand shoot into the air so fast. And we’re all in agreement.

Sarah gives mom the booklet and then we’re off, hustling the first few hundred yards to get ahead of everyone else. And then, it feels like I can finally enjoy it.

We climb a small, steep hill, encased in tunnel-like green vegetation. Ferns erupt like pom-poms on the banks and clay soil provides steady walking. Though it’s green, everything is dry underfoot and along the banks. At the crest of the hill, the canopy below diminishes and we catch a glimpse of the next beach—gold sands, turquoise water, and groups of strolling people.

The Abel Tasman Coastal Track is a Great Walk in line with the Routeburn Track and the Milford Track. However, Abel Tasman is far more accessible than most Great Walks. Day hikes on Routeburn and Milford and Kepler and Heaphy and others are all possible, but usually just from one end or the other. Because Abel Tasman is a series of beaches, all it takes it a quick water-taxi ride and pick-up to walk any part of the track. Or to simply come in for the day to relax on the beach. Kayak groups dot the waters in calm bays. There are five times more camp grounds than on any other Great Walk. And yet, it’s not crowded. There are far more people than I’d expected given my previous Great Walk experiences, but everyone still has their own space. Across the whole kilometer-long expanse of Onetahuti Beach, there are only perhaps forty people total.

The forest chirrups with the twitters of fantails and the occasional echoing call of a bell bird. Other than that first hill, it’s flat, easy walking.

As we walk, we discuss the instructions Sarah shared. The guided group, she made it clear, was taking a secret shortcut that the self-guided walkers, she said, wouldn’t take in case they got lost.

Well, we are pretty determined to take the secret short cut regardless. All we know, from Sarah’s comments earlier, is that the guided walkers will get their feet wet taking the short cut. As we near the end of our walk for the day, we keep an eye out for possible short cuts. Sarah is leading people in their 60s and 70s, so it can’t be too difficult of a short cut. Mom has us pause at a small stream, wondering if that is the route, but I say no way. Sarah wouldn’t lead her group through a stream where you have to scramble down the bank and duck beneath trees.

Farther on, we find a large sign off the side of the trail indicating how far we have yet to go to our destination. But, upon closer inspection, there is a narrow trail behind the sign…

We follow it through overgrown bushes and down the hill, past a “path closed” sign where someone had carved “this way” and an arrow into the wood. Eventually, it spits us out into a tidal area. The tide is going out, so only a small section in the middle is underwater. We skirt around the outside and walk along the estuary beside a row of private holiday homes. When we reach a sandy bank, we then follow a back road up to our lodge. Easy peasy!

The lodge is beautiful, flower lined and well-tended. Boardwalks lead between several buildings and and a lounge and dining room occupy the ground floor of a well-kept old house. The deck out front boasts several splendid seating areas, and our rooms are wood-paneled and spacious.

The bar is open and bar snacks are available, so my group descends upon the offerings like hungry lions even though we haven’t worked that hard.

The rest of the group trickles in, Sarah and another guide, Mo, brining in the final group of guided walkers. At 6pm, we get our talking to, where the guides share all the info for the next day. Then it’s time for dinner: yummy bruschetta salad, sweet chili green-lip mussels, and ice cream. As the staff clear the table, we decide to play cards, commandeering one of the dinner tables for our own entertainment.

As the night comes to a close, I head off to bed with the girls, but the boys embark upon their nightly cribbage match. Mike dominated the first half of the trip, but my dad flipped the switch about half-way through our vacation and now keeps winning and winning. We’ll see if he can keep the streak!

The next day is an odd one. There aren’t many offerings in Awaroa Bay, and high tide is at 9am. The tidal estuary is a source of great amazement and consternation. At high tide, the sea laps at the retaining wall at the edge of the lodge’s property. By low tide, the water has retreated several hundred yards to be a small glistening thing in the distance. The estuary, once covered to the chin by a watery blanket, now lies barren as the desert, dry sand and crushed shells crunching beneath flip-flopped feet.

It’s too cold for us wimps to swim at 9am when the tide is high, but by 10am the estuary will already be too shallow for kayaking. Additionally, there aren’t any walking paths other than the one we did the day before or the one we’re going to do tomorrow. Mom and I take it as an excuse to spread our towels and lay in the sun, even if it starts out so weak that we’re in long sleeve shirts. It does warm up, but the sea breeze is still strong enough that we’re not hot.

We head back to the lodge and sit on the deck for lunch and here, or course, it’s scorching hot!

In the afternoon, Mom and Sandee go for a walk while dad, Mike, and I follow the guides for a short stroll along the empty estuary. We walk mostly barefoot in the soft, squishy sand. We see a white heron in the distance and many variable oyster catchers mucking about in the recently uncovered sand. At the end of the estuary, we head into the bush about a hundred yards to see an old steam engine that was used to strip and grind flax fibers. The steam engine was placed there in the early 1900s. Our guides said it was used for flax milling, but Google says it ground bark from black beech trees to use the tannins in the tanning process. Either way, when Sarah turns the wheel, the internal parts still turn and churn one hundred years later.

Walking back from the steam engine, I step into a big splotch of mud which grips my shoe like a gooey ghost from Ghost Busters and rips it off my foot, tearing the strap. I walk back barefoot, but then have to repair it temporarily with safety pins and tape. I’ve got spikes on the side of my shoe, but the repair works!

The evening is another exercise in being spoiled. We play cards in the sun (though carefully, as some of us already have sun burns–namely, the top of mom’s feet). We drink. We eat. We play more cards. The sun sets slowly and deliberately, leaving the sky swiped with soft shades of pastels.

Morning of day three starts fairly early with a big breakfast and then a boat ride across the estuary. They put us in beautiful bright orange lifejackets just in case, but on the other side of the estuary it’s so shallow that the barge can’t get us all the way to shore so we wade through the water for about twenty yards. The walk after that is delightful–green trees, sometimes thick and tall–untouched forest. In other spots, it’s regrowth, recovery from once farmed areas, but still bursting with life–simply younger life.

We see people dozing in sleeping bags on the beach and climb a steep hill and then descend on to Totaranui Beach. This is a beach that can be driven too and the massive campground area and large number of people milling about the beach showcases how popular this site is.

Water taxis big and small motor up to the beach and lower their ramps. For bigger boats, like the one we took the day before, the ramp extends out from the boat onto the sand about thirty or forty feet. It’s stable, with hand rails, and leads easily up to the top deck of the boat. On the smaller water taxis, the ramp folds out from the back of the boat by the outboard motor. It’s maybe five feet in length. Though the smaller boats dropped two anchors, they are still moored in the crashing waves and the ramp jumps and turns. Waves crash over it. The skipper stands in the water up to his waist offering his hand to those exiting and entering, but it looks like walking a tightrope. People take turns trying to time their exit with the waves, and then run down the ramp and jump from the end onto the sand. Sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s not, but I sure am getting a treat with my front row seat to the shenanigans.

When the rest of the hikers show up, we take another water taxi nearly back to where we started. It’s convoluted, but essentially we hiked the the whole top of the Abel Tasman Track, just in disjointed sections because of high and low tides. So the boat drops us and three others off at Onetahuti Beach while the rest of the walkers go one beach further, to Tonga Beach (where we started two days ago). But we get to kayak from here on out!

Gimpy Mike with the injured shoulder partners up with our friendly guide, Krystal, in the double kayaks. The two shorties (Dad and Sandee) go together. And I share with my mom. I let her have the back, so she can steer. And we set out!

The beaches are almost more beautiful looking back at them from the water than from standing in the sand. The water against the golden sand turns into a stripe of deep green, and beyond the water is a perfect tropical-esque turquoise. We can see massive boulders below us and sometimes come so close I think we’ll scrape against them. But everything is distorted underwater–appearing bigger and closer than it is–so we never do.

I’ve been hiking for months, so my leg muscles can handle long days, but I haven’t done much kayaking and my arms protest after far too short of a time. Mom calls up to me, “You know what would make this better–ekayaks!” But I disagree. Even though my arms are tired, they’re a good tired. A hot-sun-slow-ache kind of tired that lets me know I’m doing something worthwhile.

After lunch, we leave the shoreline behind and get out into the open ocean. The wind is at our backs and the swells sweeping us diagonally into the next big bay. We try to surf them, paddling hard and then coasting along atop the wave. I don’t know if mom and I actually figure it out, but we have fun trying and arrive at Torrent Bay before we know it.

The water in the bay is calm, low tide tugging at the shore. The kayaks skim above the sand for a hundred meters, barely a foot or two of water above the sandy bottom. A small island rises out of the sea. Eventually, we scrape the sand and clamber out to stand ankle deep in gently lapping seawater. I’m transported by the slow waves, the brilliant sea, the golden sand, the thin shimmer of water stretching over the shallow sand. It feels almost familiar and I realize it’s almost exactly like how I pictured the final scenes of the Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when they paddle up to the end of the world. Calm, relaxing, serene, and magical.

Slightly less serene is hauling the 65kg sea kayaks up the sloping beach, but teamwork and a cart help make the job easier. Then we get to explore the lodge, our home for the next two nights. It’s lovely, though not as stunning as the previous lodge. Everything is much smaller, and I have the smallest room of them all (which the staff apologizes for by giving me a free bottle of sparkling wine, so that makes me feel special).

We relax and snack and makes plans for the next day. We enjoy a yummy meal–one of the best I’ve had in New Zealand–spicy pork belly curry with delicious homemade naan.

That evening, I lay on the bed beside my mom and for the first time the whole trip we talk and talk and talk, uninterrupted, no distractions, and it’s everything I needed. To have her beside me and be able to spill all my thoughts and feeling onto the duvet between us, and for her to do the same.

Day four in Abel Tasman shapes up to be my favorite one yet. After talking with Sarah the night before, I get the low-down on the nearby waterfall hike, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone that’s where we’re going because it’s a four-hour hike with some technical bits, and she doesn’t want the other guests going. So we set off on our secret hike.

It starts with a short but steep climb, and then meanders through the forest for a good long time. The track is interrupted by a small waterfall with plenty of rocks to play on. We continue after a short while, promises of better waterfalls to come.

We reach Falls River and I am delighted by a series of waterfalls that can reached by scrabbling along the bank, then crossing over the stream, then more scrambling and climbing. This is my parents’ and my bread and butter, so we jump and skip and crawl along to see how far we can go, enjoying the falls, the big rocks, and the beautiful pools.

Along the way, we keep an eye out for Ella.

Sarah told us about Ella–the long finned eel that lives in one of the pools. As my parents and I are making our way back to Mike and Sandee, they call out that they’ve found Ella.

I am unsure if I want to swim in a pool with a hiding freshwater eel. Those things can get up to two meters and I’d watched a group of them devour a fish carcass in less than a minute. But once Mike and Sandee find Ella and Sandee feeds her some bread to keep her distracted, dad and I decide to jump in.

Well, to be more specific, dad walks into the water until waist deep and then stands there with his jaw clenched and his hands wrapped around his torso. I sit on a rock and slide in all at once, submerging to my shoulders. It is cold, but after a few seconds it begins to feel great. Relaxing and soothing and refreshing. Mom overcomes her hesitation and slides in with us.

After a while, we make our way over to Mike and Sandee and meet Ella. Ella is the star of the show for some (ehem, Sandee and Mom). They gush over her blueish eyes and kind face and try to pet her head, but Ella wisely retreats. All I can picture is the time I watched a swarm of eels devour a fish carcass in under a minute. Ella does look a lot less vicious all alone, but that feeding frenzy mindset still lurks in her somewhere.

We retrace our steps away from Falls River, emerging on the edge of the estuary where we started.

Not ready to be done, we walk along the estuary for half an hour to Cleopatra’s Pool. Sarah had mentioned something about a natural slide and I wanted to see it. Maybe go on it.

Upon arrival, there are a lot of people at the pool, but Dad climbs in right away, wading across the sharp rocks and climbing up the waterfall. There, he does what Charlies do and makes friends with a local who goes down the waterslide, showing us how to do it. Then the three of us have to try it!

It’s great except for the sharp rocks underfoot at the very end. Mom lets me borrow her water shoes and Dad and I go again. With protection on the bottoms of my feet (and therefore no pokey rocks gouging into my skin at the end), it’s fantastic. We talk several others at the pool into going down the slide and suddenly I realize that other than a mom and daughter duo, we’re the only ones at the pool. It is blissful and beautiful and fun. I could have hung out for an hour.

But it had already been a long day, so head back. Instead of tracing the outside of the estuary, we cross the creek (which Sandee falls in, albeit in slow motion. Sorry, Sandee, but I’ve got to be true to the narrative!) And then we cross the dry estuary. At one point, there’s another creek to cross. I just take off my shoes, but Dad convinces Mom to carry him across. There’s some hissed swearing, but otherwise she impresses us all!

Walking across the estuary is completely different. It feels like we’re crossing a 1 kilometer stretch of desert–sand mounded into dunes and the sun beating down on our necks. But we climb up a final mound and there is the beach, our lodge only a hundred meters away.

I’m not ready to go back yet, so my parents and I take a walk into the primordial waters of the end of the Narnian world. We startle a manta ray, who goes darting off, a dark shadow in the thin skeins of blue water. In the distance, a boy helps his dad dig for clams in the mere inches of low-tide water.

My legs are tired, my heart is full. It is a good day.

On the last day in Abel Tasman, we climb back into the kayaks and skim down the shoreline, visiting fur seals all the way. Some are lone wolves, others big family groups. They swim along the shore, leap and play, and roll over while napping to get sun on their other side.

It’s the final day, but it’s hardly bittersweet because there’s very little that could have made the entire experience of Abel Tasman National Park much better.

Except dolphins. I had been hoping we’d see dolphins.

But we eat lunch on a beach, we paddle through the turquoise waves, we end at a picturesque spot as dark clouds roil on the horizon, moving our way. We take a short, scenic bus ride back, then drive to Nelson, where we eat pizza at Eddyline Brewery, whose sister brewery (owned by the same people) is located in Buena Vista, Colorado. The winds whips the trees around as we leave, and it feels like everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.

But that’s usually how it feels when you’re with people you love.

Read More about my NZ Family Adventure…

Days 1-4: The Kunkel Clan Arrives in New Zealand!

Days 5-11: Everything I Know About the Kunkel Curse

Days 18-19: (coming soon)