Wednesday March 22, 2023 - Hiking the Abel Tasman Trak

 

Today our plan was to take a water taxi up the coast, get dropped off on a beach, hike about 5 miles and get picked up by the water taxi on another beach. And it was a beautiful day weather wise. We are getting back into planning around weather, a problem we do not have back home in Arizona where it is sunny all the time.

We had breakfast at the AirBnB with our new friends and then four of us walked downtown to catch the water taxi. The taxi we took today holds about 100 people and it is basically a ferry boat with seats. The cool thing is when it approaches a beach, a praying mantis looking thing unfolds of the front of the boat to extend down onto the beach. The taxi driver just heads to the beach, unleashes the walkway and people get on or off. Very efficient.

We met some Kiwis on the boat and had a nice chat about NZ history. They were just taking the taxi up the coast, having lunch at Awaroa Lodge and then returning in the afternoon. We got dropped off at Torrent Bay along with a dozen other folks. The taxi leaves and you are just standing on this golden beach. We found the trail and climbed up a ways. The Abel Tasman Track is considered the easiest of the 10 New Zealand Great Walks (good for my knees) and once you climb it stays pretty level the rest of the day. We took what looked like a 5 minute track down to what we thought was a beach but since it was high tide, all we could see was a pile of rocks with breakers. We noticed when we climbed back up that someone had scratched "15 mins" on the sign instead of the "5 mins" the DOC said it was. For Milo it was a painful excursion. I'm thinking it might be time to talk about a knee replacement. 

Back on the track and it was a nice even trail. We arrived at Medlands Beach but since we had plenty of time, we continued on to Bark Bay where there is a hut that Deb wanted to check out. Again, the hut was spacious, clean, well

equipped, off grid of course, with a nice bathroom in the back and an outdoor kitchen and picnic tables scattered around. We picked a table overlooking the beach and had our lunch (cheese, crackers, salami, apples, carrots). We hiked back to Medlands and set up our towels on a log on the beach and had a nap and people watched. The combination of the turquoise water and golden sands is stunning! Since the water taxi picks up and drops off people here, and there are multiple companies, we got to see all the comings and goings for an hour or two. Our water taxi came at 3:30 and we got on board and snagged a cold beer and a cold diet coke to enjoy on our 50 minute ride back to Kaiteriteri. We had to stop at a couple of beaches on the

way back and since it was low tide by now, everyone had to experience a "wet foot landing". where the boat can only get so close to the shore, so the end of the ramp is in the water and you go barefoot.

We stopped at the grocery store down by the landing and picked up a chicken salad sub and a bottle of wine for dinner. Then walk back up the hill to the AirBnB, did some dishes, and ate our dinner.

Great day!!