“Is that all you have – what you are wearing?” the kayak guy asked when he picked me up from my hostel that morning.
I was wearing nothing but my shorts and a windbreaker. My legs ridden with goosebumps, and I assume my lips were probably some variation of blue. I was getting picked up for two days of hiking and kayaking through Abel Tasman National Park and I was clearly not dressed appropriately to spend the night camping.
Yeah, I foolishly followed someone’s advice about not bringing warm clothes acting like I do not get cold easily. I will probably die tonight in the park, I said, thinking back to when I managed to survive a snow-blasted night spent sleeping in a tundra of a van when I was traveling through Tasmania.
“We will fish out some clothes for you. I am sure there are things lying around,” he said.
We arrived at the Abel Tasman Kayak office where I met my kayaking guide Darryl, a Kiwi who has been doing this for almost 25 years. He later told me that in the off season, he spends his time planting trees.
The driver emerged from the kayak office with a pair of trackies (re:sweats) for me to borrow. “These are my old man pants – do not lose them! And I think Darryl has a fleece jumper he can lend you.”
A wave of relief crashed through my body. I sorted out some of the things in my daypack, and Darryl had a look at some of the food I was bringing with me: instant noodles, a sachet of porridge (re: oatmeal), apples, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I was hoping would stay good til lunch time the next day and some smaller snacks.
“You’re camping at Anchorage tonight, ey? You do know that there is nothing there to cook with – you have to bring it all.”
Oh yeah, but these are instant noodles and just oatmeal. All I needs is hot water.
“But you will need a pot to boil the water- do you have a pot or a portable burner, like a gas cooker?”
I laughed. Um, haha…
“There are not even utensils there, ‘ey. Do you have a fork?”
Oh god you are joking me!
“No! I’m not – but I reckon you will be all right, ‘ey. I am sure there will be other people who will let you use some things to boil water and all.”
I hung my head in defeat, feeling like the world’s worst camper until the two British girls showed up without even having backpacks to carry their stuff in.
I will like these girls, I thought to myself.
I met my group for the next couple of days: Katie and Abby, the two British girls who would also be camping with me, and a girl from Switzerland named Natalie, whom I would be sharing a double kayak with.
Once we were all ready and organised, we jumped on to a water taxi hooked up to the back of this truck that drove us down to the local beach in Maharau.
This is sort of what Indonesia looked like – even the Thai Islands…in a way, I thought to myself as we sped off through the waters, heading out to embark on the morning’s adventure.
Granite cliffs covered in vegetation rose from a clear as day sea and towered strong and steady into the sky.
Yet at the same time, Abel Tasman was unlike any other that I have seen before: it was teeming with stretches of untouched, unmarked and absolutely desolate golden sand – the kind of glittering, sparkling gold that you would expect to find at the end of a rainbow.
I was heading out to do a Marine Reserve trip through the Abel Tasman National Park, which would see me spend one day out on the waters kayaking and my second day walking back to the starting point on Maharau.
Though I wanted to do a trip called the Remote Coast, which started further up north and had a longer walk the second day, one of the kayak guides recommended that the Marine Reserve tour would be the better option.
The Marine Reserve tour started with our water taxi up to Onetahuti Beach, where we prepared our kayaks, met a British/Irish couple who would join our group and got a brief run-through on things like how to best paddle and what to do if the kayak tips over.
From there, we were off toward the marine reserve.
The morning was crisp and clear, the sort of morning where you feel like the ocean and sky meet off in the distance and carry on together forever, and the sea was as placid and as calm as a lake. The sun was getting stronger as the morning yawned on, giving us a beautiful day to be out on the water kayaking.
One of the highlights of kayaking through Abel Tasman is making your way over to the Tonga Marine Reserve, which was our first stop out on the water that day.
The Tonga Marine Reserve is famous for being a playground to New Zealand Fur Seals, and I felt like we got there just in time for recess to start.
As we approached the reserve, we could hear the seals barking as well as crying like whinging children from the rocks scattered around us.
There were a handful of seal cubs dancing about in the water, curious as ever and swimming right up to our kayaks with their heads bopping out of the water and their big, brown eyes staring up at us. They would swim under our kayaks and jump about beside them, just frolicking all around. I am certain they knew we were there, and they were excited and wanted to have a bit of fun with us.
Cute and playful does not even come close to describing how unreal these little pups were.
Sad to leave our seal friends, we continued on to paddle south, and along the way Darryl told us about the lay of the land.
Though he had a flair for his adult humor from time to time, whenever he started to talk about the history of Abel Tasman he seemed incredibly knowledgable, passionate and engaged, as if he would know the answer to any question we wanted to ask him about the park, about the area, the wildlife and about New Zealand in general. It seemed like it was knowledge he acquired out of pure interest of the land and the history rather than something he had to learn as part of his job.
We continued to paddle around Mosquito Bay and on into Sandfly Bay to explore some lagoons, lay eyes on some unbelievable holiday homes that are among the only ones in the park and channel our way down some inlets before stoping off for lunch and a swim at Bark’s Bay.
The last time lunch was included in a tour of mine was when I went white water rafting in Pokhara, Nepal, and the day’s special was do-it-yourself PB&J with the option of some canned sardines. Talk about a fail.
This lunch, however, was one that had me filling up my stomach for days: chicken wraps, beautiful kumara salad and enough carrot cake to go around plenty of times (re: I had three pieces).
It could not have been a more perfect afternoon, and it was the best way to discover the secret nooks and crannies of the park.
All together, we were out kayaking for anywhere from a total of four to five hours, and at one point we even did our best to pick up the small but highly non-existent gusts of winds and sail a few hundred metres or so.
I never knew you could go sailing with a kayak (probably because I have never really been kayaking before), but so long as you have a lightweight, make-shift sail of sorts (ours did not necessarily look like one you would use on a sailboat), some wind and a well-organised team, you are golden.
Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of our improvised, three-kayak sailboat, but the memory of the effort and determination we had into getting that sail up, keeping it up and getting ourselves sailing will most definitely not be forgotten.
We arrived at the Department of Conservation camping sites on Anchorage Beach at around 3:30 where Abby, Katie and I would spend the night. We waved good bye to our good friend Darryl, his jokes and humor most definitely ingrained in our memories.
The camps were much cleaner and much more modern than the wooden, shabby huts I was expecting (possibly a result of having spent too much time in Asia), and the sand was at our doorstep. We had this pristine beach virtually all to ourselves.
(I know the sign does not say Anchorage. It was pointing us the in the direction we needed to walk along the beach to get to Marahau.)
I would have gladly been stranded on Anchorage Beach for days (had it not been for the whole cooking and food situation.)
Luckily, my Danish friend Mikkel whom I knew from my bus helped keep me well fed by making me some steak and potatoes that he cooked over an open fire. My new-found German friend Jann helped me satiate my sweeth-tooth by foolishly offering me his block of chocolate that (naturally) I polished off, leaving him thinking that somehow a mouse wandered into our hut and ate it all. (I told him not to leave his chocolate with an American!)
The night enveloped around us, leaving us with a masterpiece of stars painted and shining bright above our heads.
I have this ridiculous obsession with the night sky (and a goal to catch a great night-time photo): The stars and the moon are calming for me – just this serene and quiet reminder of the beautiful things in life that I really did not get to see growing up in street-lamp filled city (or living in Korea for a year).
“I have never been able to see things like – like the whole Milky Way like that up there. It is amazing,” Abby said. And it was true. I felt like the whole universe was sparkling right above our heads. I wanted so badly to reach up, grab a star and put it in my pocket.
Abby, Katie and I set out early the next morning to start our walk from Anchorage back to Maharau.
We walked along the coastal track, which was no more than 12 kilometres or so. It was an easy and gentle walk without any hills or steep inclines that wound its way along the coast through lush, green jungle-like vegetation and dense forests.
It took us about five to six hours to walk the path as we kept taking breaks to stop off at a couple of beaches that were barren of footprints and felt undiscovered by anyone else.
Along the way we talked about life, books, authors, TV shows, travels, the future – our hopes and goals of things we want to accomplish, places we want to live, experiences we want to have and what it is like to be far away from home.
Like me, Abby and Katie had originally wanted to do the Far Explorer kayaking tour; however, though we only spent one night in the park, we still left Abel Tasman with radiant smiles and our explorer appetites sufficiently satisfied.
There was definitely no better way to revel in the park’s beauty than by striking a happy medium of spending time out on the waters as well as lacing up my trainers to hit the walking trails. The Marine Reserve Kayak tour gave me the liberty to do just that.
I love Abel Tasman, and spending some time out in the park sits high up there on my list of must-do experiences for New Zealand.
I think, too, that Abel Tasman was greatly shaped by the people I spent my time exploring it with. Often, especially as a solo traveler, it is the people I meet along the way that tattoo a place onto my heart and serve as a steady reminder of why it is I love traveling.
Disclaimer: I was a guest of Abel Tasman Kayaks and received a media industry discount for the tour. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
