Hiking Abel Tasman Park

December 18^th, 2019

Throughout my travels in New Zealand, other travellers whom I’d met had mentioned Abel Tasman Park as one of their favourite stops on their trips, so naturally I had to check it out. It’s named after, yes shockingly, a guy named Abel Tasman.  He was a Dutch explorer around the 1640s and yes, Tasmania, the Tasman Sea and many other places in this area are named after him.

Ideally one would spend 3-4 days hiking (or tramping as it’s known here) to really get the full experience but I figured a short hike was all I could afford thanks to my new ferry commitment in a couple of days but that was better than nothing.

Leaving the campground around 9 am, after 20 minutes of driving I started to climb Takaka Hill and its continuously winding road.  I stopped at a viewpoint parking lot and walked the couple hundred meters to the actual viewing platform.  Being early morning after a rainy night, there were misty clouds rising up from the lower terrain which occasionally obscured some of the vista but I loved watching the convection (can’t take the free flying out of the boy).  As I stood there enjoying the view, I heard a familiar voice.  Turns out it was Ollie, an Englishman in his mid-twenties whom I had met a week and a half earlier in the tiny hamlet of Duntroon near the east coast when I was running away from bad weather.  We chatted for a bit, comparing notes of our latest travels.  Funny yet not terribly surprising how you run into the same travellers here and there.

The road continued to snake back and forth up a mountain and then finally descended into a valley before tracking back up the coast.  The tide was mostly out exposing some large sandy beaches, one even with power or telephone poles tracking across it which were partially submerged when I passed by later on my return trip.  Eventually the paved road ended, and the gravel road was slightly “white knuckle-ish” as it was narrow, curvy and even a bit muddy from the previous night’s rain.  I probably averaged about 25 km/h in this section.

You might be able to make out the telephone poles in the sand...

I arrived at the Totaranui camping area which was also the launching point for multi-day trampers who either hiked out from this spot or took advantage of a boat taxi.  My plan was to do a short hike up to a viewpoint and then down to the next beach called Goat’s Bay, have some lunch and return.  It was a lovely little walk with a few good views and some varying terrain.  I can see the appeal of this park and definitely a spot worthy of more time if I had it.

It was a lovely beach.

Definitely a well maintained trail.

Goat's Bay Beach:

On my drive out from the park...I give it at least one thumb up!

I love the caution signs in this country...so different from Canada's.

This just happened to be beside the road...a nice towering column of rock.

And then you had to drive through this natural tunnel.

A few clicks down the road, the penguins got more sophisticated...

And they might even be able to ride bikes!

The drive back was just as nice as the drive there.  I didn’t stop as frequently for pics but still tried to soak it all in.  Unfortunately as I pulled into Kina Reserve, the campsite where I stayed the night before, there was a sign that they were full.  Oh well,  I knew there was the other place just down the road and there I was able to park at one of the few spots that you still had a few of the ocean where you weren’t tucked behind a small ridge.  Tomorrow I head to Picton in anticipation of my following morning’s ferry back to the north island.  The south has been good…but it’s time to move on.