By the numbers
10.18 kms
14,650 steps
The day started off early and dark as I had to get the bus
out to Kaiteriteri so I could catch the boat for a nice trip around the Abel
Tasman National Park. I had been looking forward to this trip as I had never
been to that area of New Zealand before and wanted to head there to get some sights
in of a beautiful part of the country and I had hoped that the weather would
hold up for me too. The weather seemed like it would be fine and there was
little cloud cover from what I could tell. The bus came and people all hopped
on. There were people going further on by bus than Kaiteriteri. It took around
an hour for us to get to the little village or outpost if you could call it that.
I made sure I checked into the vessel info desk and they gave me tickets with
my stops on them as I was jumping off the boat at certain places and doing a
walk. The best part of the walk was that it wasn’t a guided walk, but at your
own pace. The trip begins in Kaiteriteri, goes all the way up to Totaranui and
returns all with drop offs and pick up. It might be a small area we would be
touring, but its somewhere that I had not been to before.
I could walk through a little stream without worrying about
getting my feet wet or trying to put my shoes on wet sandy feet. Along the way
we got to see some of the settlements where you could stay for more activities
including kayaking around the islands. We were dropping people off and some
that were doing walking trips had their names read off and I wondered about trying
to get off early, but when I collected my lunch, I was told they would do that
on the return journey. We did see seals that included the pups being fed. The
drop off would be at the Tonga Quarry where they quarried the stone like for
parts of the Nelson Cathedral. The pickup would be at Medlands Bat, where we
would have around 3 hours of walking time. I hoped it would be enough time.
Once it was my turn to walk off, I found the estimate was around an hour and
half. For some reason I was expecting a flat walking trail, but the walk was
steep in places and not the best for sandals. I went at my own pace and there
were people everywhere, but I seemed to pass them. People towards the other end
were coming up, where I was happy that I was going down the hill. I had huffed
and puffed eating an apple up a hill, but left the rest of my food til I got to
the other end. Along the way near the camps there was phone reception, but
anywhere else there was nothing at all.
Along the way to the Bark Camp, which was near Medlands Bay
there was a info panel about Wilding pines as they are contamination from pines
outside the National Park as they self sow. I went to check out a structure
then, I seen a man raking, which would be so no new pines grow and gives native
plants a chance to grow. The pines only live for so long and would cause fires
if there were bushfires. I did cross a swing bridge that was raved about online
and I wondered if I had come across the right bridge as it didn’t seem that
spectacular. Another one was around an hour away, but I was going to risk
missing the boat. I wandered down to the beach where I realised there was
plenty of time before I needed to catch the boat. I plonked my butt on a branch
and started eating my lunch while being visited by a seagull and immediately after
a Weka that came running to see what I had. It tried walking behind me and I
was well aware of the cheeky little bugger. The bird tried to pull the paper
sack out of my hands, but it knew it had lost that tug a war. I couldn’t willingly
littler in a place that had no bins. The Weka was a nice bird, but I called it
a thing of evil.
It was nice to sit and relax watching the nice blue water as
the boat eventually came to pick us up. It would return us to Kaiteriteri,
where the tide was now in quite a bit as we were alot closer to shore than the
vast amount of sand we had earlier. It was pretty cool and I went to get on the
wrong bus too thinking I had the correct one. Luckily the driver corrected me
as I wanted to get going. The bus did turn up and we were off back to Nelson,
which was around another hour trip. It wasn’t that bad as we dropped off
passengers along the way and I had thought about going for a walk, but I was
actually pretty tired out from the days events even if I didn’t seem to have
done much. I have one more day in Nelson before heading to Wellington.
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