Abel Tasman Coastal Track

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February 12th 2007

Published: March 4th 2007

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Benje

Me and Rich Catch up

me and Rich catch up with a night out in Nelson

After the Queen Charlotte track I travelled to Nelson. Nelson is a really cool place. It has a nice relaxed feel about it yet it also looks like it can be quite an active place too. In Nelson I met up with my friend Richard from home to start travelling with him. He'd been in Te Anau, right at the bottom of the South Island where he'd been working as a Tour Guide in the Glow Worm caves for 6 months, a pretty cool job but he was getting tired of it i think. Richard owned a car so it was great for me as I miss my car so much from home I was allowed to drive - we agreed we can take turns.

Afte a few nights in Nelson we went to Marahau to do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. It is a 4 day tramp up the coastline with beautiful beaches scattered all the way along. The night before we stayed in a tipi which was really wierd but I really enjoyed it I would definately stay in one again. Another entertaining moment as you can see in the pictures was an incident with the horses

the night before the walk

We stayed in a tipi! it was cool!

next to our tipi. Rich had hung his towels on the fence and some horses came a ripped it to shreds. It doesnt sound the greatest story I know but was so funny as we both were thinking the same thing and we knew it was going to happen but we just didnt react. lol.

The first day was an easy walk passing some nice beaches along the way. The second day was much different where we had to cross through a giant estuary where we had to strip down to bare feet to cross the water. At the end of the day we passed this beach called Onetahuti Beach which was absolutely beautiful it looked like the setting for lost it looked ace! That night was really entertaining too as the whole campsite was woken by a loud scream we presume it was possums rummiging through our rubbish bags. we thought it was something serious by the sounds of things.
After a sleepless night we set off for the third day which was the best day of the walk. After a short walk we came to another estuary that we were supposed to cross at the earliest of

Horses are dangerous when it comes to towels

lol!

1pm but we decided to try it at midday. The water was upto our chest when crossing so we had to strip to our swim wear and carry our bags on our heads! Ah it was ace I felt like Indiana Jones lol! It was typical bush walking alot of fun.
After a long day we arrived at our camp spot a beautiful cove overlooking the sea.
The last day was another brilliant day. In the morning we went on a side trip to a place named separation point which had great views of the entire track we had walked. And also had a huge seal colony. We were really lucky with the weather as it went really nice on our lasty day after being very poor the previous 3 days, but this resulted in all the seals basking in the early morning sun on the rocks at 'Separation point' we saw loads of them. it was the first time Id seen a wild seal and we managed to get really close. They looked huge!
The rest of the walk became fairly tough walking up Gibbs hill. A really steep climb that never seemed to end!
At the end of

Abel Tasman Coastal walk day 1 me

the walk we felt great, the views had been fantastic and the last day had been brilliant for seclusion which was certainly hard to find in the first three days. Overall a really fun tramp

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