Babbling Brooke’s Travel Blog

On December 29th, our 18th day in New Zealand, Matt and I gathered up our backpacking gear and drove to the nearby town of Marahau, the launching pad of our highly anticipated backpacking trip through Abel Tasman National Park.

This was a highlight of the planning process for our 5 week trip- we had booked campsites back in August and made sure we had everything we needed when packing in Seattle.

Abel Tasman is a well-known National Park on the northwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand, known for turquoise waters and golden beaches. The trek is 60 kilometers long, in total, or about 37 miles. Water taxis are available to pick you up or drop you off on various beaches so the possibilities when planning your trip here are seemingly endless in terms of where you start or end!

Matt and I had opted to take a water taxi from Marahau up to Awaroa (one of the main campsites) and then hike back to Marahau over the following 3 days and 2 nights (a little over half of the total length).

So we parked our car and walked to Abel Tasman Aquataxi for our pre-booked ride. First off, walking up to a line of boats hooked up to blue and white painted tractors is just such a cool sight to start to the day. I love how Kiwis think and operate!

We then got in a bus that drove a short distance to the beach where our tractor-boat combo met us and we boarded right there on the side of the road. The tide was clearly on its way out, and we watched in amazement, as multiple tractor-towing-boats drove down the boat ramp and onto the beach, then into the shallow water.

Once our boat was actually in the water, we took a quick tour of Split Apple Rock, a famous rounded boulder that is perfectly split down the middle.

From Split Apple Rock, we officially turned north and headed toward our drop off location, Awaroa.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, or more deceiving for that matter. Not a cloud in the sky, calm waters, and just a gentle breeze. We felt like we had landed absolute paradise!

One of the coolest parts was getting a wet drop off in which it was time to ditch the shoes and get off the boat right into the gorgeous water!

We first walked north a little bit to explore the Awaroa tributary which is only crossable at low tide. Venturing out, the path is marked with poles that have an orange circle at the top. It was vast and wide and it made more sense why there was so much emphasis on tidal charts- you would not want to get stuck out there when the tide was coming in! 

We backtracked south and decided to get a good lunch to really “start” our trip. And, because it was Matt’s birthday, we decided burgers and a glass of wine was the right move. Feeling high on life, we talked about backpacking more often and actually planning the Mont Blanc trip we keep talking about. This was also our first “camp site” we were seeing in Abel Tasman and, very deceitfully, thought: perhaps each stop on the trail is like this? Spoiler alert, no other stop was like this. AKA no other stop had a restaurant and/or even drinkable water for that matter. 

It was time to get hiking, and we gleefully started. 

The forest surrounding us was absolutely incredible. I have never seen a place quite like that first day in Abel Tasman in my life. Some of the trees looked like they were the inspiration behind Dr Seuss’ creations: Tall and lengthy with little blobs of leaves at the tops, swaying together in a breeze. Every shade of green, and then the piercing blue of the water beyond would poke through. Ferns everywhere. Matt and I were in heaven. 

We continued along and came to a large beach with golden sand. The wind had gone from a nice gentle breeze to pretty darn steady here..in fact it was really rippin. But we were too drunk on natures beauty (and without any cell service at this point) to reallllyyy understand what was transpiring. We continued along, smiling. 

I want to preface that we did, in fact, check the weather before going on our trip- I sometimes refer to Matt as a weather man because he is so into checking the weather on his various apps. Thus, because of him, we were aware there was suppose to be some wind and rain happening during this trip. Afternoon wind, dying down in the evening to give way to rain. We even toyed with cancelling our trip but thought “no, we’ve planned this much and we can handle some wind and rain no problem- it doesn’t have to be perfect weather for us to enjoy ourselves.” Famous last words. 

Nearing our campsite as the tide was coming back in, we needed to make another tidal crossing and realllyy didn’t want to take the longer high-tide route and add an extra hour to our trek. Luckily the water, while coming in fast, wasn’t too high just yet. We gleefully crossed the incoming tide, with the water about mid-thigh for me. My only job was not to fall since I had the camera in my pack! 

Getting to our campsite, we realized perhaps camping in NZ is different than in the U.S. In the U.S., there are generally very distinct campsites that are somewhat separated or at least clear enough to judge where one ends and another begins. Our campsite, Bark Bay, was located on a thin, sandy spit between the ocean and the tidal lagoon we crossed, which was now full of water. There wasn’t much to it other than a few bushes and some tent clearings, so there was little to no clarity on where we should set up. To top it off, that wind from earlier had only gotten more intense. Folks that arrived before us were busy fortifying their tents.

We scrambled to set up our tent and ended up picking a small spot between a few bushes to try and hide from the wind. Gusts blew sand in our faces and also right into our tent as we worked to get it up and secure the rain fly over. The weather was clearly changing but we had no service to see how bad it was or was going to get. To top it off, the lagoon behind us was now full and the waves in front of us were now crashing less than 20 ft or so from our mostly-unprotected tent.

The dopamine of the whole day was starting to come down hard as we hastily set up camp and dove inside for some reprieve from the weather. Inside our shelter, we also discovered that the nearby birds were very much NOT shy of humans, and our rain fly had just a big enough gap that they could shimmy under, looking for food. We shooed them away. 

Wanting to try and turn the day back on the right track- we boiled water to make our backpacking meals and dove in. Matt’s was actually pretty good but my meal was so terrible I actually couldn’t eat it (and that says a lot coming from me). I also had a 3 and a 6 candle I had brought from home, so I piled some sand together under our rain fly annex and lit them to celebrate birthday “36” for Matt. Nature was ruining the plans I had but I was determined to not let it ruin his birthday! 

Needing a change of scenery, we decided to go for a short walk and check out the ‘hut’ the campsite had further inland (secretly hoping they served wine and burgers). It was a short walk that curved alongside the mountain on the opposite side of the lagoon as our campsite. To our dismay, it was a shack with some bunk beds for other backpackers who reserved them, and that was it. When we came back to our site, we discovered that the folks next to us had packed up and left due to the weather. We also found out that the birds had gotten inside our tent annex and managed to get inside his backpack to not only eat snacks but they also shit all over it and our tent. It smelled sooo bad. Beyond that, since Abel Tasman is a nature conservatory, it is very much a ‘pack it in, pack it out’ environment-aka there isn’t much to work with them you suddenly need to clean bird shit off of things. 

I got to work with what toilet paper I could find- but it ended up also leaving residue of toilet paper fluff mixed with poop on the bag. It was an absolute disaster and with the weather and now this– we both were pushed over the edge. At this point it was VERY clear that the weather report from the morning had changed and it wasn’t safe to venture out to try and hike all the way out. It was about to be dark, and while we had headlamps, we barely had any water (our filter was being extremely slow), and had already hiked multiple miles that day with packs…we just needed to get through the night and reevaluate in the am.

To hammer this home, Matt talked with another fellow camper who confirmed our worst fears- this was a huge storm (a Pacific cyclone) and the Water Taxis had been evacuating people that afternoon/early evening but had ceased operations and left folks stranded. Some were going to try to ride it out while others planned to hike out the next day. We prepared for the night ahead. We brought what we could into the tent and I guarded the annex by unzipping the tent and grabbing a hiking pole to scare away the birds when they would try to come in again- eventually they either learned their lesson or the storm just got too bad for them to be out. 

By 10pm when the last light of the day was fading, our rain fly was blown off its stakes for the second time and it felt like our tent was about to be blown away. Matt and I set about running around the beach looking for things to fortify our tent. Everyone else had taken any rocks available so I ran the beach combing for a rock I could carry back. Matt grabbed a drift wood log and carried it over to block the wind. Between that, piling sand up around the tent, and a few rocks used as tie down points, we secured the tent.

To say either of us slept that night would be an understatement. Despite our fortifying, wind at a certain direction still coughed up sand under the rain fly and into the tent, and thus onto our faces. At high tides, the wind gusts would blow sea spray onto our tent from the nearby crashing waves. Exceptionally hard gusts would feel like we were about to be picked up like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz. The constant loud noises of the waves and wind, not enough food, water, and no sleep meant anxiety was taking over. My brain role-played various scenarios: tsunamis, huge wave swells crashing up and flooding our campsite, more birds in our gear… I could hear large trees snapping and crashing down in the distance.

Later, Matt recalled that everytime he would look at me in the night I was just wide eyed staring at the ceiling of the tent. Sounds accurate to me! 😂

By some miracle, morning did come and the work we had done on our tent meant that it stayed upright the rest of the night. Covered in sand, thirsty, and defeated we looked at each other and said ‘let’s get the hell out of here’. We were not taking two more days to get out of there, and instead would hike the rest of it in one shot, through the bad weather.

With all the efficiency we could muster, we packed up our belongings. We had a 1.5L bottle of water that finally filled up (it took all night to filter using an old gravity filtration system) to share and we loaded our pockets with the rest of the snacks and shoved the absolute DRIEST dehydrated breakfast meal down our throats (major regret buying those).

The rain that was suppose to arrive came as we began hiking out, and it never stopped. It was warm enough out that wearing my rain jacket felt like wearing one of those sweat suits that boxers use to drop weight, so I ended up hiking 90% of the way in just my shirt, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. 

We luckily made good timing and crossed another low tide trail at Torrent Bay, avoiding an additional 2 hour detour around. But there was still shallow streams from the rain so our shoes were absolutely soaking wet from that point on. Once we made it to Anchorage Bay, one of the next largest campsites- we were hopeful it would have similar amenities as Awaroa, where we started- It did not. 

We searched Anchorage Bay beach for the Aqua Taxis that we had ridden in on, as this was also a frequent stop of theirs. We thought if we could just find a boat, we could get a ride out of here. Hiking a 2 day trek in 1 after the night we had was feeling like a near impossible feat at the moment, given our gear was soaked through and our legs were cramping. 

We took the opportunity of some coverage from the rain to at least change shirts and socks, and to rinse our shoes and attempt to get some salt water and sand out. Feeling a tiny bit refreshed, we decided to wait a little and see if a boat came. 

A commercial boat entered the bay- a bigger power catamaran that we didn’t recognize – but I noticed some people on the beach lining up for it. Desperate enough to act, we grabbed our gear and fast walked down the beach. Reaching the boat just as they were about to leave, we asked the guy loading up if they were heading South and if we could have a ride in that direction. Good news was they had room for us and were heading South. Bad news was they were not going where we needed to go, however the guy said there was a chance he could drop us off at a different beach along the way to cut our remaining hiking time down from 4.5 hours to 1.5 hours. Resoundingly, we said yes and boarded the boat. 

Out of the safety of the harbor, we realized why we were not seeing any other boats. The swells were huge (Matt’s app later said 12-14 ft when he was able to check). The boat was getting rocked by the rough seas and wind. I was not a fan, but the relief of skipping part of the hike outweighed my seasickness trying to take over. 

With some luck, they were able to drop us off at Appletree Bay which meant we were now only 1.5 hours away from our car after starting the day 9+ hiking hours away. And FOOD. And water. And dry clothes.

Feeling drunk with exhaustion, or perhaps just really low blood sugar, we trudged forward- one foot in front of the other. After an excruciatingly long final stretch, we saw our destination from the top of the final ridge. We could almost make out each individual car!

The relief when we made it to the parking lot was next level. Needing food STAT we just stripped in the parking lot (it wasn’t busy), threw on some dry clothes with our towel ponchos over us and walked to the nearby Park Cafe – a popular spot for hikers to celebrate completing the trek with hot food and beer. We went HAM ordering food and the wood-fired veggie pizza I got was insanely good. 

Being back in civilization a day early, we needed to figure out where we could sleep for the night since our Airbnb in Nelson wasn’t until tomorrow, the 31st. Matt booked a hotel he found, and after enjoying our meal we got back in the car and headed to Nelson. 

Upon check in, the woman at the front desk asked if we had been out in the storm (I think the towel ponchos gave it away) and Matt told her that we had been camping in a tent in Abel Tasman. She burst out laughing in disbelief as she told us the whole region had been rocked by the storm. People were without power, there was flooding, and huge trees had blown down all over town. That was sad and shocking but also felt so validating given our struggle! The receptionist was so nice and informed us we’d been upgraded to a bigger room- we opened the door to our room to discover what was practically an apartment! It was huge! And it had a bathtub which we really needed to properly clean of all the bird shit items with detergent and hot water.

With the prospect of a real bed waiting for us, we mustered up the energy to wash Matt’s backpack, part of the tent, and hang up everything wet. I shook out the tent outside to get the sand out and hung everything up to dry all over the room. Thank goodness for the large size cause we used it all up. 

Freshly showered we ventured out quickly to grab some food again and found an amazing dumpling spot- Jay’s Dumpling Cafe. It was the perfect comfort food! Matt also did some weather checking and we zoomed out to see the circular storm that had passed us. We both let out an audible “OH!” when we realized what we’d been through- The wind speeds were still above 45mph as the Cyclone was moving North, meaning we really had camped through a tropical storm and gale force winds! 🤯

Back at the hotel, I checked on the rain fly before getting into bed. It had sparkles of sea spray all over it from the waves crashing so close to our tent site the night before.

Full with food and lots of water, we joyously got into a real bed and slept so deeply!

A true adventure that was still hard to laugh about for a solid 24 hours after! With time, everything heals and I can say now with a grin that that was the most insane backpacking trip I hope I ever go on.

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