February 15-18: Abel Tasman Track

  

Headed north from St. Arnaud through a valley rich in apples, kiwis, and especially hops, on our way to the gateway to Abel Tasman Coast Track in Marahou. 

 Just in time to eat a fancy lunch in the campside restaurant and then drive over to the Kahu Kayak rental place to scope things out for tomorrow.

Later walked the beach as the tide went out and watched the water taxi operation, which was fascinating and varied with the tidal situation, as the beach disappears at high tide and at low tide extends far from shore.  Spent the night getting packed for our two days of sea kayaking and one day of backpacking.

 

 

Showed up next morning at Kahu Kayaks at 8:20 with our gear and hopped into a boat on a trailer being pulled by a tractor.  Road it down the road to the boat launch and then it drove onto the sand, turned around and backed out into the ocean until the boat was free. Then we motored along the coast about 30 minutes to the beach at Onetahuti where the boat turned around again, dropped a front anchor, and then backed onto the beach where it threw another anchor while we and our kayak got off with a bunch of other people who were going on a tour.

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On shore we got our orientation to the double kayak and some tips on where to go. We had our two campsites reserved through the Department of Conservation, which everyone calls “DoC.”

Out on the water, the waves were wavy and there were swells and we could not go too close to the rocky shore. Although we were quite stable, we were nervous as the weather was supposed to deteriorate, so we went back to Onetahuti and hiked the Abel Tasman track north a ways where we discovered a cool flightless bird. We got so excited about it that we told fellow hikers and they just laughed and said it was a weka and that they were all over, which we later discovered to be true. The cooler thing we did was again hike north on the track and discover the five rivers flowing into the bay, the last of which had a big and beautiful waterfall. At the beach we checked out the hut and campsite, and then kayaked to Bark Bay around a couple of headlands---no problem but Dirk was nervous and my elbow got tendonitis. Found a good campsite in the woods near the beach 

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 Each DoC beach camp has a shelter kitchen with sinks with running water, a sink outside for filling up water bottles, and another faucet for washing your feet in. The multiple outhouses all have flush toilets and tons of toilet paper. Very civilized. Campers in the huts have bunks and mattresses.  Our rental tent and sleeping bags are fine but the mats are just foam and not cush enough for us.
At Bark Bay we snorkled along the shore and only saw a few fish with black dots on them.  The water was pretty cold. 

Our campsite location was near beach so we listened to waves crashing all night.  Dixie even got up at midnight to move kayak higher as high tide occurred about then.  The next morning we kayaked around a couple of headlands and explored a lagoon on our way to Anchorage Bay, where Andy from Kahu Kayaks was already on beach waiting for some others.  So we emptied our camping gear, and gave him our kayak, snorkels, and a few odds and ends to take back and we were done with kayaking.

Then we packed our camping gear up and left it near the hut while we walked the "15 minute" round trip to Cleopatra’s Pool. 

                                                                                        

Turned out the trip took 2 hours and we were really hungry when we got back, which made our discovery even more painful.  The pouch in Dirk’s pack that contained most of our food was still zipped, but a bag of trail mix, three Anzac cookies, two pouches of tuna, and most of a bag of raisins had been removed and or damaged. 

Weka on trail.
We presumed the wekas had somehow opened up the zipper and eaten and tossed about our food and someone had cleaned up the mess and zipped our bag back up. Inside it was a half eaten damaged bag of raisins and a pierced packet of mayonnaise, but all else was gone.  We still had two apples, some crackers and bread, and peanut butter sandwiches left. A terrible blow! Ate the apples for energy.

                                                                                

We then gathered our gear and hiked over the headland to Watering Hole Camp, a half hour ascent followed by a steep but short descent. There was one other party there and the weather was getting sketchy.  We hurredly put up our tent under the cover of the trees during a light rain and got the rainfly on quickly to keep the insides dry.  We stuffed our packs under the vestibule and climbed inside about 7pm and did not leave until 9 the next morning, as the predicted terrible storm set in.

It must have rained many inches that night, as the sound on our tent was deafening and it was too torrential to even think about getting out of our tent. We designated a Nalgene bottle to pee in. We ate our PB and J sandwiches and drank water and read our books, played gin and “golf,” and then listened to book "James" on Dirk’s phone until finally going to sleep. The tent miraculously did not leak.  It stopped raining by 6 or 7 in the morning and Dirk got up and started gabbing with our neighbors, who were fixing breakfast. They took pity on us and gave us hot coffee and tea to go with our breakfast bars and a bag of dried apricots to supplement our bread rations that were all we had to hike 6.5 miles out with. That helped tremendously.

The wekas made a terrible ruckus in the morning and even tried to come into the tent while I was eating by bread and apricots.  They are fearless unless very close to you. Can’t ever quite grab one. They would have made a good meal….chicken sized.

 

  Packed up the wet and dirt splattered gear and headed out.

                                       

Big silver tree ferns, myriad types of ferns, moss, lichens, more beech trees with black mold, beautiful gullies and water ways with nice bridges, periodic spectacular coastline views, made the mileage fairly pleasant. 

Much of the trail was quite wide and smooth but almost all of it was carved into a steep hillside with quite a dropoff. We stopped twice along route for our bread and apricot and water rations and managed to make it out without hypoglycemic episodes. 

Conveniently, there was a nice restaurant right at the end of the trail so we had big lunches and smoothies/milkshakes to replenish our energy. Dirk’s "good" left foot chose the location of the restaurant to split asunder, leaving a ¾” bleeding cut over his bunion.  He hobbled the few hundred feet back to our RV.
Back at our campsite we enjoyed showers, doing laundry, bandaging Dirk’s foot, and trying to figure out how to dry our gear when it was still raining intermittently.