Abel Tasman National Park (New Zealand Part 26)

For Abel Tasman National Park, we booked the "Crème de la Crème" tour. We got directly onto the boat at the water taxi company - which was still on a trailer on land. Then we went with a tractor through the village to the water.

Since it was low tide, the tractor had to drive into the water before it was deep enough to launch the boat.

Then we went at a considerable speed, with a lot of splashing, to Onetahuti, one of the campsites in the park.

There we disembarked (of course it was a wet landing) and were briefly introduced to kayaking. We were a very small group: besides us, two others were also kayaking, and of course our guide who gave directions and told a lot of stories.

We paddled around Tonga Island. This is a small island where various birds live and some seals take a break from hunting. We saw two of them lying on the rocks.

As we continued along the coast, we saw some rock arches and two little penguins swimming in the water.

In Bark Bay, we went ashore for our lunch break and could change for the hike. The seagulls there were quite cheeky and stole one of our sandwiches from our hands.

Then we hiked about 12 km along the coast, enjoying some beautiful views of the sea.

But often we went through wooded areas with fern trees that provided us with some shade on the way.

At Torrent Bay, we could have chosen the good two kilometers shorter route along the beach.

However, low tide was already over and we would have had to wade through water. So we decided to take the detour along the cliff coast.

We then took the water taxi back from Anchorage after a break on the beach.