Abel Tasman national park

I left Nelson after one night and headed to Marahau on Friday to do some planning on upcoming treks. Marahau is a good gateway for doing tramping or seakayaking into Abel Tasman national park. During the summer all the accomodation is fully booked but since now it's winter and off-season it was pretty quiet which is of course a good thing. This time of the year the average amount of hikers in the park is around 30 persons/day and during the summer the count gets over 250. Which one would you prefer?



I had a plan to go hiking to Bark bay from Marahau and stay a night at the hut which is kept by department of conservation. Next day I would like to take a kayak back to Marahau. It took me a whole day to book a suitable trip since the minimum number of persons was 2 for all the trips. I had already given up the hope but then I met one woman in my hostel and she had the same kind of plan and the same problem with too few people wanting to do the same route. Well we booked the full day kayak trip from Bark bay to Marahau on Sunday and it cost 130 nzd/person + hut accomodation 10 nzd. The company promised to deliver the kayaks and a guide to Bark bay on Sunday and also take our backpacks back to Marahau since there wouldn't be enough space in kayaks for them.

The track from Marahau to Bark bay was around 25km and we did it on Saturday. It was a high tide and we had to walk 4km longer route since we couldn't use low-tide passings which were now under water. The track went through beautiful coastal sceneries and tropical-like tree fern forests and along the way I noticed that my partner seemed to know quite a lot of the nature. Well it turned out that Karin was a teacher from Netherlands teaching biology to kids 12-19 years old. She was in her 30's and was pretty fit since her hobbies included trekking, running and swimming. She had also done the 4-day/160km march in Netherlands. We had a nice pasta/carrot/raisin/peanut dinner under the stars on the beach at the Bark bay.

Today on Sunday we kayaked pretty much the same route back to Marahau following the coast. We had a guide who was paddling in a single kayak and we shared a double kayak. There was a good lunch included in the trip and which we enjoyed on a beach in an isolated bay. The weather was perfect with blue sunny sky and calm waters. Saw some seals, a blue penquin and many funny looking seabirds(yeah the guide told me the names but can't remember).

My muscles are pretty sore at the moment and I want to go to sleep. It's already 9pm!
Tomorrow morning 7 o'clock I'm heading towards Fox glacier. I'm supposed to be there around 5pm so a long day travelling ahead.

Just some off-topic detail: I'm now back in Nelson and staying at YHA hostel. I met a girl from Canada and her surname is Kivimaa. She told at her grandparents had moved from Finland to Canada around 1920. She can't speak any finnish though nor has ever been in Finland.