Total Miles Traveled: 59,909
Abel Tasman Park is home to one of the most popular multi-day hikes in New Zealand. It’s known for its secluded golden sand beaches and nice weather.
Travel Notes: We stayed at the Split Apple Lodge – a nice, eco-friendly B&B albeit 10 minutes from both Marahau and Kaiteriteri. We’d recommend staying here if you’re OK with driving for meals, and if you do, go to Marahau. The food’s better there, though there are only a couple of options.
Kayaking and hiking are the major activities in the Abel Tasman park area. So, we did a tour that had both – we kayaked the first part of the day, then we were dropped off at one point in the park, Bark Bay, for a 2 hour hike.. After the one-way hike, we were picked up in another part of the park, Torrent Bay, which was supposed to be the nicest hike in the park. Unfortunately, there are no roads that go in to the park so you have to take water taxis everywhere or hike.
Here are some scenes from the hike:
One neat thing was how drastically different the landscape looked between high tide and low tide. This is low tide, where the boats are sitting on the sand.
The tide was so low that they drive tractors with boat trailers hundreds of yards away from the shore (it’s all sand). The boat then drives on to the trailer. Then the tractor hauls it back to land. We expected to get off at a dock but instead, we stepped off the back of the trailer.
Take a look at all of our photos from Abel Tasman Park here:
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