As we stood on a sand flat, where the tide has gone back to sea
exposing a mass expanse of nothing but seashells and crabs, we discussed
the beauty of this country, and compared it to others we had seen. My
buddy Jake brought up the comparison with Iceland, where he said when
you’re in Iceland you feel like you’re on another planet. That’s not how
I would characterize New Zealand, for here you feel like you’re on
earth, just a million years before man altered her to the unrecognizable
state we find much of her today. This re-connection with unaltered land
has a very grounding feeling, and created a calm among all of us.Back to the beginning of the trek… We had heard that the Abel Tasman Coastal Track was a must while in New Zealand, so when the opportunity of a long Easter break presented itself to us, we knew we had to take it. On this trip was a very complimentary crew, and much of the conversation preceding the adventure was about assigning each other’s spirit animals. Its fun to reflect on how close we all got during this trip, and how that conversation evolved. After a nerve racking bus ride to the airport (where we thought we might miss our flight), and a surprise at the lack of security required to fly domestically here, we hopped down to the top of the South Island to a goofy little town named Nelson.
Our hostel, the Tasman Bay Backpackers, was a cool spot to catch some sleep, and at 7pm every night they provide pudding and an hour of “device free socializing. That night wasn’t too exciting, we spent it listening to live music and playing pool in a couple bars in town before heading back and getting a good night sleep. The next morning, we hustled out of the hostel and caught our bus to the beginning of the track; this is where an adventure I will remember for the rest of my life began.
Day 1:
The first day of hiking was quite leisurely, with all of us stopping to take in views, snap a couple photos, or just because we were in no hurry. The conversations flowed openly and we were all in a very positive mood, proactive for the days ahead. Coming down towards our first site, we were all excited to see what camping is like on the Great Walks, and we weren’t disappointed. Running water and nice bathrooms was a pleasant surprise, and we quickly set up our tents (and hammock) in a cozy little spot in the trees and took back off out of camp.
We wanted to visit this natural moss water slide at this spot called Cleopatra’s’ pool. We hiked along the beach before heading back into the bush for another hour or so, coming up on this fresh water beauty. Ready for a little break and to cool off, we quickly jumped in, screamed from the shock of the water, and played around on the slide and in the pools. After we got our fill of cold water and exploring around the pools, we hiked back out and climbed to the highest point near the camp to watch the sunset. The sky provided us with a soft sunset that night, as it was practically cloudless, the pink to orange colors had to mimic our relaxed mood to a degree.
Once we hiked back down to camp, we ate our freeze dried dinners and played a card game, presidents to be specific, spend some time sitting on the beach star gazing, and went to bed, for we knew the next day was going to be the challenging one.
Day 2:
Waking up to a cold dark sky, we slowly packed up camp and ate some eggs for breakfast, we wanted to get as much trail behind us early so that we could slow down later in the day if we needed, as we were expecting a solid 9 hours of hiking. After breaking camp as the sun arose, we had a mediocre first hour before really picking up the pace and pushing ourselves for a while. This proved to be well worth it because, as we decided to take our first real break at a beautiful little beach, we were given a wonderful surprise.
As we sat around playing with different camera modes, Olivia says something to the effect of “is that a person wearing a fin?” As we all looked, shock hit like a ton of bricks. A pod of orcas, one coming in to what had to be waste deep water, swam by. Seeing such powerful, intelligent animals in their natural habitat was surreal, but not a single one of us took it for granted. Luckily, Jake was able to snap this shot of one of the Orcas.
After being completely rejuvenated and excited from that, we pushed on towards the next beach. Here, another great and random happenstance happened, as we ran into friends we hadn’t seen in over a month who were studying through our same program but down in Wellington. Naturally, we had to hang out on the beach, catch up, go adventure caves, and do some rock jumping with them before heading our separate ways (they were doing the track in reverse). Breaking up the long day like this definitely helped keep it from dragging on or getting old, as we pushed on until we finally got down to our last beach of the day, which was at low tide so we could walk the sand all they way to our second camp.
This site was a lot cozier and less busy, and we even got our own table here. At this point we were all very hungry, so we hurried to set up the tents and started cooking dinner. As dinner finished and the night started, the cards came out again and a very interesting game of kings cup ensued. The rule that had us all dying of laughter was when we had to switch accents, so Jake put on his best American accent and we all butchered our attempt at a British accent. Once we had enough kings’ cup, we walked back out to the sand flat and looked up at the gorgeous sky, where the moon hadn’t come up yet so the stars were bright and vibrant. Here we continued to talk and joke until we were all dead tired, and we heading back to the tents. Once in the warmth of our tents, we spend about an hour uncontrollably laughing to Jakes stream of jokes. Finally, the hilarity ended and we could get to sleep.
Day 3:
We wanted to get up and out of camp as quickly as possible, so we skipped eating breakfast there and packed up and left. Within the first hour of hiking, we found a nice log on a beach to sit and cook eggs, and spend a long while eating and waking up, as well as discussing the night we just had.
Today was going to be another fairy leisurely day, as we didn’t have too much of the track left ahead of us. That being said, the part of the track we covered that day was incredible. We would climb the side of a mountain, come down the other side to one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen (and we’d be the only people on it), then do it over time and time again.
The
inclines and declines proved challenging, but that just added to the
beauty of the beaches on the other side. Once we finally finished the
track, we were able to have an enthusiastically fueled victory swim, and
caught our water taxi back out. Once we got to the town at the end of
the water taxi, we discover, through a great conversation with a local,
that the Orca sighting actually made the local newspaper.
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Read more from Colin at https://planestrainsandtravelsustained.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the IFSA-Butler program at the University of Auckland, visit http://www.ifsa-butler.org/university-of-auckland.html
