Fern Trees feel tropical!
Find a seasoned New Zealand tourist or a well-traveled Kiwi. Ask them to name their favorite New Zealand destination. Chances are six in ten that one of the first phrases you’ll hear is “Abel Tasman National Park.”
This slice of paradise is near the end of an unexpectedly sun-warmed road. An untouched coastine boasts tropical-esque white-sand beaches, emerald and sapphire waters, and green hills that reach down often to dip their toes in the water. Thanks to a little lucky geography, the seas are generally calm.
Isolated coastline!
Of course a place of such natural beauty would be hard-pressed to escape the “Great Walk” status. Regular readers of this blog will know “Great Walk” really means extortion-grade prices. Fees for staying in huts or at campsites triple, cutthroat wardens beat the trails demanding to see permits, and by-the-day prices don’t decrease in the winter when “day” means eight hours instead of seventeen.
Given the latter, we opted out of the sea kayaking option (we’ll save it for later in the spring when we get to the Coromandel). Our collective passion to sleep in our van for free whenever possible motivated us to taste Abel Tasman by day, and drive away at twilight. Thanks to multiple access points, it’s possible to day-hike right into the heart of the park.
Scraping ice off the INSIDE of the car windows at sunrise!
Despite waking to frost on the INSIDE of our van windows 1,000 feet up from the valley floor and thirty miles down the road, the day blossomed into sunny perfection. Memories of the quaint sea-side towns we’d wandered through on the journey out lingered during our breakfast of surprisingly-tasty-Motueka-bought mussel pate. Down the road, through the mists rising off the icy-fields, we spied a tiny young woman with her thumb out. Laura is a former university student from Wellington caretaking her friend’s rural property in exchange for living on it. She gardens a few days a week for grocery money. She has no car, but manages to hitch the 10 miles pretty reliably every work day!
Lovely little sea creature!
A few adorable towns after our Laura-drop, and we crossed the park boundary. We made Separation Point our goal, and passed through every type of Abel Tas landscape on the way there — bogs, hills, woodlands, cliffs, beaches, and lowlands. I’ve recently fallen in love with barefoot running theories and spent a solid hour picking my way through the slow-to-warm pea gravel and hard pan. The park was deserted on this unexpectedly gorgeous winter weekday, and we saw not a soul. We hunkered down to eat lunch in the sunshine, watch the sea lions lounge, and bask in the sparkles from the glittering sea.
One of my favorite beaches, with lots of tiny, washed up jellies
On the hike back, we got to prove just how in-need we are of a vacation from the more trying aspects of our current lifestyle. (Living in a tiny space, spending every hour of every day attached at the hip to the same person, daily finding a successful compromise between our goal to sleep for free in our van and our goal to avoid offending anyone or giving van tourists a bad name.) We ended up using the hike back as an opportunity to have a little break. We eventually kissed and made up, right after Pat felt his very-first-ever earthquake!
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