Feb 20-22: Abel Tasman

Feb 20-22, 2024: Abel Tasman National Park

Guest intro from Clare, Captain of the HMS Pineapple Express:

While hiking places like the North Coast or West Coast trails on Vancouver Island, I have often looked out at a beautifully calm ocean while clambering over yet another headland with a heavy pack and thought: wouldnt it be nice to have a boat? This would be so much easier in a kayak.
Well, today we had kayaks, and I looked forward to watching hikers struggle along the soft sand while I floated serenly past. To my surprise, that ocean that looked so beautifully calm from up on the headland is filled with rather large waves. Easily the biggest waves I have kayaked in; some groups turned back, but not us.
I greatly appreciated the water being warm, both to make the consequences of a hypothetical capsize less dire, and I didn’t get cold when the occasional wave washed over the boat. Or when a couple of memorable ones washed over Alice in the front seat.
The hiking boots on the nice sturdy headland were looking pretty good.
Fortunately, the surf on our campsite beach was small, we landed without incident and enjoyed the kind of dinner I would never carry in a pack.

This trip was a 2-night exploration of Abel Tasman National Park.

We started in kayaks and paddled north for two days.

We then repacked our stuff into our backpacks and continued north on foot for rest of the day and the following day before catching a watertaxi back.

While we were stocking up on supplies, we were under the impression we’d be sending gear back with the kayaks. Only when we arrived to pack the kayaks did we find out that we’d need to hike with our camping gear for the second and third day. Aaaaaand the us that was packing the kayaks was far enough removed from future pack-carrying us that we still took a number of items I’d almost never take backpacking: a frying pan, a glass bottle of wine, and a french press for “plunger” coffee (as they call it here!), as well as whipping cream, potatoes, cider, and beer!

Our dinner menu included:

Smoked salmon chowder with cherry tomatoes with a side of pan-fried farmstead potatoes served with scrumpy dry cider.

Cowboy chilli fusion ramen with a side of fresh sautéed green beans served with Hawkes Bay syrah.

After a briefing on kayak safety and what to expect for weather (basically, expect the forecast to be wrong), we set off.

The section Cpt Clare was referring to is an exposed headland, locally called the “mad mile”. There was swell with a fair bit of (unforecast) wind, and we wanted to land on a moon-shaped beach 3/4 of the way along while staying out of range of the rebounding waves. It was more fun than it sounds, but yeeea – no photos from that stretch!

Wildlife sightings included an eagle ray, fur seals playing, and lots of birds.

The crew of the HMS Singalong saw a swimming blue penguin.

We had been warned about the locals, but were surprised by them nonetheless: Wekas are chicken-sized flightless campsite pests.

They were entirely unafraid of us and tried to drag away anything smaller than one of Jessi’s sandals.

However, based on the chew marks on some of our food bags, I don’t think it was a Weka that bested our caching efforts.

On the first night, somebody chewed into a dry bag of food. So, the next night, we hung our food in a tree like we’d do in BC. Somebody still managed to chew in. We were all pretty happy that we didn’t store the food in our tents as had been recommended!

The coastline here is a mix of sandy beaches, and rocky headlands with a number of lagoons and islands.

Tides here are the largest they get anywhere in the country (4-5m!).

We were able to paddle into lagoons around high tide.

The calm water was a stark contrast to the previous afternoon.

We kayaked up Sandfly lagoon and under a “swing bridge” (what we’d call a suspension bridge)

We had to cross Awaroa’s large estuary around low tide to make it a wade, not a swim.

Sea arches! Most of this coastline is granite.

The boats had great gear storage capacity. We could have been going for weeks rather than days!

The swimming throughout the park was lovely, and drying out after was easy.

Felicity discovered new talent coaching, commentating and judging our Olympic athletes in doubles aquarials.

The only real downside was the black flies.

This is a moonlight shot (me fooling around with exposure for nighttime again) of one of the swimmable beaches. Sometimes, we even had a fresh water stream for rinsing off the salt. (Reflected above)

The return water taxi trip offered many opportunities for watching people work. We and 4 others were picked us up first, and then 6 double kayaks stacked two deep crosswise across the back seats, and 2 guides. Then, another 2 doubles, and two more passengers. When we neared base, the watertaxi drove onto a waiting trailer and without stopping, the whole watertaxi with boats and all was taken back over the sandy flats by an amphibious tractor.