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Old McDonald’s Farm, Marahau, South Island, New Zealand. 3340km

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The weather has improved considerably in the last 2 days, especially today. We left Nelson yesterday and reached Marahau, a tiny town on the border of Abel Tasman National Park. Abel Tasman was a Dutch Explorer who was the first European to discover this country a century prior to Captain Cook. He called it Neu Seeland.

We settled into our campground, right at the park entrance, on a farm property. The children got a kick out of the llamas and the peacock wandering about. We went on a short stroll along a coastal path and spent some time at a stinky beach (seals must have spent some time there prior to us). The tide was very low, so we could see a long stretch of sand before the ocean starts.

The park itself is famous for its coastal track, about 50km long, which takes a few days to complete. There is a water taxi service that takes people to one of several bays along the track, and picks them up at others. Many others prefer to kayak along the coast and enjoy the views from sea level. We asked around for the best option for our family configuration, double stroller included. When we didn’t get good enough answers, we decided to go for the purported best section of the track, from Torrent Bay to Bark Bay, a 7km hike through bush and forest with glimpses of the ocean from various viewpoints, and a very nice swing bridge too.

When we got up this morning the sky was grey and it was chilly, so we packed raincoats on top of all our other gear. We took a water taxi to the drop off point. (Actually a dingy took us to a big boat, and then another dingy to debark at Torrent bay). It was high tide and the water was pretty rocky. Paola got a bit seasick in the hour it took us to get there.

We finally reached Torrent Bay at 11am, and commenced our hike. After climbing a bit to a nice viewpoint, we stopped for lunch and admired Torrent Bay from above. We then continued walking for about two hours, and Shir and Orr fell asleep in the stroller. The path was OK at first but became increasingly narrow and filled with obstacles. Paola, as well as other hikers gave me a hand here and there, and we managed to keep the girls sleeping, despite some of the scary stunts our wonder buggy performed.

Orr and Shir woke up just in time for another rough patch of trail, this time downhill. So we got them out of the stroller and they walked down to the swing bridge with Paola, while I followed from behind with a much lighter stroller.

The swing bridge is very impressive, about 50 meters long over a wide river. The kids had no problems crossing it, what with their daily playground training for the past 8 months. In fact, they ran so far ahead of us on the bridge that we started to worry. After we got the kids across, I ran back to get the stroller. I had to fold it up and carry it in my arms because the bridge was quite narrow.

To our pleasant surprise, the rest of the way to Bark Bay was much easier, as the path was wide and san rocks and roots to disturb. We made it in to the beautiful bay almost 5 hours after we began the hike, with a great sense of achievement for all. Ron walked liked a mensch the whole time. And the girls were on their best behavior too.

We spent another hour on the beach before the water taxi came to pick us up. It was so warm that we all kicked off our shoes, the kids their pants, and wandered around the each looking for shells and playing with the pools created by the incoming tide. In the hour we spent on the beach, the water came in from about one hundred meters out to practically the tree line. The tide differentials here are very famous.

Our return was much faster, a single fast speedboat whisked us back to Marahau in 30 minutes, and we transferred to a tractor towed platform for the ride back to the farm. The tractor was waiting for us in water that was 1.5 meters deep, and we were rushed to transfer quickly because the tide was coming in fast.

Back at the campground we had a hearty supper and the kids were all asleep before 8pm. Heaven. Good night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 3:04 am and is filed under Big Trip, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.