Abel Tasman national park is the smallest of New Zealand’s wild parks, but also the most visited. We’d heard a lot about how great it was, so we drove North to the top of the South Island to find out what all the fuss was about.
After stopping for the logistical necessities of shopping, fuel and coffee in the bigger towns, we headed into the park area. Admittedly, you can’t really drive into or stay in the park unless camping (with some exceptions), so mostly people stay in the villages around the edge, either to the East side in Tasman Bay, or the West in Golden Bay. Since we had some time, we were going to do both!
A Bit of History
If you aren’t a nerd like me then please skip past this box!
Abel Tasman park is named after the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman. Though Captain Cook of Britain is generally thought of as the first European to ‘discover’ Australasia, it was actually the Dutch. Tasman had sailed from the Dutch colonies of modern day Indonesia, hoping to discover a fabled great Southern Continent. It was believed that deep in the Southern hemisphere there was a wonderful continent called Terra Australis, rich with resources, as a natural balance to the landmasses of the North, it was thought to stretch across the Pacific and connect to South America. Tasman sailed South and somehow managed to miss the entirety of Australia, hitting first land at what we now call Tasmania. He turned East and in December 1642 was the first European to sight New Zealand, which at the time he thought was a part of Terra Australis. Prior to our arrival in NZ I had wondered if there was an ‘Old Zealand’….I discovered that there was, since Zealand is a region of the Netherlands!
Tasman arrived on the West coast and sailed North, reaching what is now Abel Tasman national park. The details of what follow vary depending upon the source, but I will try to find a middle thread to follow. In this rich beautiful land, he parked his ships in the bay of Anchorage, and the beach was soon filled with Maori. Maori legends told of white people coming to threaten them, possibly an ancient tale fed from through loose contact with Asians who had been victims to European atrocities, so they were wary.
Tasman remained in the bay for a long time, trying to establish peaceful contact. Unfortunately there was a chasm of cultural difference, resulting in misunderstanding. European ways of greeting appeared as threatening to the Maori as a tribe of Maori warriors performing Haka rituals did to the Europeans. Eventually a party sent from the ships were misunderstood as an invasion party, and the first blood was shed. Tasman promptly labelled New Zealand as a hostile and dangerous place, so no European set foot on land. He continued up the coast of the North Island then sailed West, eventually discovering Australia.
Hearing reports of such hostility, no European returned for almost 127 years when James Cook landed, eventually leading to the British colonisation.
Returning to the far less intrepid story of our travels, we had seen many beaches in the South Island, but the climate rarely begged you to lay on the sand in your swimwear. As we’d moved North, the weather was far warmer and sunnier, so we stopped in Kaiteriteri, a small place with just a couple of cafes and beautiful strip of beach where we laid and did nothing.
Warmed by the sun and sea, we drove into Marahau for the evening, where we were meeting Amber and Jense, the lovely Dutch couple we’d met a week ago in Franz Joseph. We spent a lovely evening chatting with them, and I anticipated that we’d be spending the next morning with them as well. I was wrong.
I was rudely awoken at 5am by my wife, righteous payback for the times I have woken her up early for a surprise adventure. I was told to put on swimwear and shoes to get wet in, then after a hurried breakfast we set off. At this stage I was a little grumpy at being taken away from our friends.
Ness dropped us off at a bench, where two guys gave me a tablet and asked me to complete a waiver form….still no idea what it was for.
Life signed away, and having been joined by a few other people, we were fitted with wetsuits which were stowed into bags. We were then loaded onto a minibus… the sign writing gave it all away. Canyoning!
I enjoy an adventure….I enjoy wilderness, cliffs, valleys, scrambling around, doing silly things….but I don’t enjoy jumping from height into water. It is a bit of a fear for me – I argue a very rational one! So the picture on the side of the bus of someone jumping from a very high cliff into a river didn’t fill me with excitement. Knowing that Ness knows this about me and that she loves me, I kept my mouth shut.
The minibus ride was literally 25 metres across the car park. I was a bit surprised to be offloaded and then, in a tarmac car park, put onto a boat!
A tractor towed the boat on its trailer down to the sea, where at low tide it must have been over 500m out across sand until we were in the water. Skillfully dropped in the water, the boat turned and we set off out towards the spectacular rising sun.
The boat took us across the water around the Abel Tasman national park. We’d planned to hire kayaks to do this trip, but after seeing it I’m glad that we did it by boat. We pulled into Anchorage Bay, one of the many stunning golden bays which characterise the park. We were dropped on the sand, surrounded by beautiful hills covered in thick sub-tropical forest. Another group soon joined us, they were part of a travel tour and had spent the night on a floating hostel in the bay.
Led by our two guides, the group of 12 set off across the sand and into the hills. We walked for about 90 minutes through the beautiful scenery, which was a great opportunity to chat to some of the others. The first of the two guides was a big, very dry Latvian chap called Yuri, and the second was a Kiwi called Zeb who was walking barefoot with his long hair and necklace, cooler than either of us could ever hope to be. Zeb was the epitome of a cool New Zealander brought up in the outdoors, he was fit, laid back, friendly, and a capable climber, walker, kayaker, canyoneer and everything else you could think of. We will return to him later.
We also chatted to the other participants, most of whom were on organised tours around NZ….a very different experience to us. Coming from across the world, they were a lovely group and gave us some great advice in where to go in the North Island.
The walk felt very cruisy to us (less so to some others I think) and we were soon at the top of a long, steep sided canyon which zig zagged as it descended down to the sea.
We were given lunch (at 9am) and donned our wetsuits and harnesses, which featured stylish bum sheets allowing us to slide down rocks easily without shredding the wetsuit.
Yuri gave us a brief on how to jump and slide, then we dived into the chilly water and started with a short swim down to the first rock face.
Just as we were getting in, Ness asked me ‘I hope you’re ok with this’… I thought ‘well, it’s a bit late for that now isn’t it?!?!’, but just smiled.
Zeb gave us a detailed briefing on how to abseil. Ness and I politely listened, though without the nerves and trepidation that laced many others in the group. Knowing that we were confident abseiling, Zeb pointed at me to go first and I quickly clipped in and slid down the rope. There was one novel addition to this abseil – normally you would tie a knot into the end to stop falling perilously off the rope – but instead the rope had been set to finish just before the water, and we were to deliberately ab off the end of the rope, falling a metre into the water.
I was ok with the fall, even backwards a metre is fine, but it went against every instinct I’d trained when it came to allowing myself to slide off the end of a rope. It was a good bit of fun! Unlike others I found the next bit more intimidating, a test jump from a rock just 2 metres above the water. I found even this intimidating, but did it fine. We then had a short slide down a waterfall into a pool. Once there I was tied on and told to be a goalkeeper for those coming behind, to prevent anyone shooting off the end and over the next waterfall.
That next waterfall was descended by being lowered from the top. This sounds pleasant, but being lowered into and through a waterfall is really pretty abusive. It felt to me like my wife had volunteered us…paid for us… to be waterboarded!
The next few obstacles involved sliding down some gently angled falls, and a zipline over one. Then came the bit I was nervous about, the first ‘big’ jump. I was relieved to find that I wasn’t the only nervous one, with many others hesitating to go. Zeb was signalling for people to jump by counting down from three, but when my opportunity came I wasn’t waiting for a countdown, I just walked up and jumped off, no looking. Using this tactic it was surprisingly easy…just a walk, a drop and a splash…then all done! Needless to say Ness loved it!
We had another series of slides, zips and abseils, and I admit that I started to enjoy it. We reached the biggest of the jumps, at 8 metres high. After the 6m one going ok I’d been thinking of doing this, until the briefing of ‘you have to take off from this small spot, jump through the trees, clear the ledge below and land in that small area, or you’ll break both of your legs and back’. Not for me thanks!!!!
Ness did the big jump so smoothly, along with a couple of others, while the rest of us did a little 2 metre jump, playing around with front and back flips.
The next two sections were a bit funky…the first involved going down a slide on your back headfirst – rather unnerving! The second involved laying on a rock and having the giant Latvian guide grab you by the ankles and literally throw you off a small waterfall. I will forever be thankful to my wife for volunteering us for such a wonderful experience!
The final slide was perhaps the most committing. It involved sliding down a gentle fall with an upwards ramp the other end. You’d be shot up into the air, to fall 2 or 3 metres into the pool the other side. The catch is that from the lip of the fall there is only about 3 metres until a rock wall the other side, so as you are flung upwards you must tuck your legs in to save them hitting the far wall. There was an alternative, but by this stage I had given up on life and thought I’d just follow Ness down – it was almost good fun.
Having reached the bottom of the canyon we began the short hike back to the beach. I must admit that I’d actually quite enjoyed the activity – not something I’d have chosen to do, and some of the sections had been less enjoyable (jumping) or less interesting for us as climbers (abseiling), yet the experience of journeying through the beautiful environment had been great.
The boat took us back to our car parking space (an odd concept) and we headed back to the campsite for a warm shower. We spent 3 nights in this paid campsite, enjoying real toilets and hot running water… A true luxury which we wouldn’t enjoy again for several weeks.
Our next stop involved a huge loop around the national park, from Tasman Bay to Golden Bay, where we were to stay around New Zealand’s climbing paradise of Takaka. On arrival we’d arranged to meet Zeb, who took us climbing at a local spot. After a couple of easy climbs, and one brutally hard one, he took us for a drive to a nearby waterfall.
Obviously he wanted to go to the waterfall to jump off it. Something I had no intention of doing, and even Ness wasn’t going to do given how big it was and how much water was blasting down.
As mentioned earlier, Zeb was just a really cool guy, he’d grown up in the outdoors, his youth spent with nature as his playground. He was friendly and laid back in a way that made him a joy to hang out with.
Unfortunately we had a couple of days of light rain around this time, which deeply outraged us. Our plans to go to the beach the next day were slightly foiled, so we lazed around drinking coffee and then drove to look at a drizzly beach in the afternoon. The one huge win for the day though was finding a perfect camping spot.
Located in a small clearing of trees just beside the sand, on the expansive crescent of Golden Bay, we would spend the next three nights in wonderful, peaceful seclusion, watching sunrise and sunset in our private paradise.
As the weather cleared up we went to Payne’s Ford, the home of limestone climbing in New Zealand, and thus a mecca for climbers and dirtbags from far and wide. We had eschewed the tradition of staying in ‘Hang Dog’, the climbing campsite beside the crag where the history of the nation’s climbing is literally written in the toilet walls, along with a lot of socialist political scrawling. It was crowded and dirty so we were pleased to be returning to our beachside spot.
We had expected the limestone at Payne’s Ford to resemble the limestone we were used to from Europe, but instead it was more similar to the unusual layered formations which we had seen at Pancake Rocks on the West Coast of NZ. Climbing it required a steep learning curve, but we enjoyed it and after a couple of days we were doing ok.
As is always the case at climbing venues, we were lucky enough to meet some cool people, making it a pleasure to hang out. Much of the hanging out took place at a swimming spot only metres from the crag, where the river flowed into a few bays under steep rocks on which people climbed, swung and jumped.
Our time in this area was fairly short, and a little damp, but thoroughly enjoyable. Sadly our time soon ran out and we had to make our way towards Picton, where a ferry would take us to New Zealand’s North Island.
The journey there took us back through some familiar towns and then through new ones like Nelson. The last section of drive wound through the Marlborough Sounds, an area of small fiords where the sea encroached on the steep hills.
We spent the night camping on the edge of one of these fiords, though didn’t get to fully appreciate it as we were up at 5am for the short drive to the ferry.
The ferry made its way out through the Sound towards the Cook Straight which separates North and South islands.
We had been on the South Island of NZ for around 8 weeks, and we felt connected with it in a way we hadn’t felt anywhere else. It had been a place of unbridled natural beauty, from towering mountains to golden beaches, with a population who were warm, friendly and relaxed. The spirit of community and of a love for the outdoors was a thread running through society, along with a sense of responsibility for each other and the earth. It had made us feel a sense of belonging, a sense which will no doubt call us back one day.
We were heading to the North Island, a place which shares much yet also has so many differences. I am writing this as we are finishing our time in the North, so I know how we feel about those differences, but it would spoil the next blog if I gave it away now.
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