Abel Tasman

We next travelled to the northern coast of the south island to Abel Tasman National Park, a beautiful coastal area with sandy beaches and blue-green water. Upon our arrival, we had a bit of a change in plans. We initially planned to stay at a lodge in the park that night, which required a trip via water taxi to get there. Though, once we arrived, we found out that they had changed the taxi schedule two days back, and we had missed the last boat. So instead, we spent the night in Marahou, which ended up being a very pretty area to enter the park on foot. The next morning, we took the first water taxi to Anchorage Point and hiked along the coast up to Bark Bay. Much of the hike was in forested coastal area, and we’d emerge at isolated beaches. A water taxi then picked us up at Bark Bay and brought us to the Awaroa Lodge within the park… after a quick stop to check out a colony of baby seals. Once we arrived at Awaroa, we broke out our swimsuits and took our first long walk on a beach this year. I later went back to the beach to photograph and was the only person on the whole beach, which was a cool experience.

We had nice dinner at the lodge that night, seated in unique, super-tall chairs. The next morning was much cooler out and threatening rain, so we spent the morning curled up on comfy leather chairs in front of the huge fireplace at the lodge. We had an interesting water-taxi ride back to Marahou in light of some rough seas and a boat overly crowded with people, luggage and kayaks. That evening we flew from Nelson to Taupo. The second leg of the flight was on a small propeller plane that seated less than 20 people. The landing was a bit on the bumpy side in light of crazy winds in Taupo. We were very happy to get off of that plane!