Abel Tasman Detour

January 30th: Hackett Hut to Kaiteriteri Beach


We walked from Hackett Hut down a very well maintained trail to a car park.  We hadn't realised just how "in the middle of nowhere" this car park was going to be.  How on earth were we going to get a ride? We stood there for about 5 minutes debating... there was a Gardner weed whacking the car park... maybe he could give us a ride to the highway?  No- he did one better.  Actually a thousand times better! Thankfully we had run into someone who actually lived right next to the Abel Tasman walkway-what a stroke of luck!  He offered us a ride just as soon as he was done with his job.
Once we were all sandwiched in (myself with two of the friendliest Labradors in the backseat) we hit the road.  Stopping by a grocery store, then heading into town.  It took over two hours to drive up some very small country roads to get to Kaiteriteri.  We had really lucked out, this would have been a difficult hitch otherwise.  On the way up, our new friend told us a little about himself; he had been the leading detective for the South Island.  Handling all kinds of cases from murder to drug trafficking.  Now that he was "retired" he decided to do what he loved best which was working outside, maintaining the national parks and also working in pest control for the possums and rats.  New Zealand has no predators to take care of these creatures so they overpopulate and become a terrible nuisance.  The country employs many people to lay traps every 100 meters on trails, they also drop 1080 poison from the air (which is highly controversial) Unfortunately they can't introduce any predators to take care of the rodents because those same predators would affect their rare flightless bird population. Cody and myself can't stand the poisons and traps, but it's all apart of hiking in New Zealand.  We're just glad to be able to go home to a country that has a healthy predator population.


We were taken as far as Kaiteriteri Beach which was just below the start of the Abel Tasman Track.  Once there, the rain started settling in so we hunkered down in Bethany Campground gorging ourselves on burgers and real fruit ice cream and waiting for the weather to clear.  We watched the spot tracks of our fellow TA hikers who were hiking in the Richmond Ranges. They had obviously stopped for the day to wait out bad weather. No fun, we were glad to be off the trail. Here is our spot track: http://mrcocard.followmyspot.com/jaz-and-cody-new-zealand

 Enjoying a burger while looking at the Richmond ranges from across the bay

                          Real fruit ice cream

 Scrambling around the bay to a secret little spot with a view

                        Our goal was sighted

After a rock scramble we finally came to the funky rock

Abel Tasman was not a track to be hiked in the rain.  It was known for being incredibly beautiful, and we wanted to enjoy it in the sunshine. So we stayed two nights in camp January 31st-February 1st. and then head out with the sunshine.


February 1st: Boat ride to Totaranui (top of Abel Tasman)


Our plan was to take a ferry ride up the coast to the top of the 36km trail, then walk back down to Kaiteriteri from there.  The whole walk would take 1 and 1/2 days.  It had to be timed out because of high tides affecting the trail. This meant that we took the later ferry, which was good because the remaining clouds cleared for our boat ride.

On the ride we stopped by Split Apple rock

Saw Fur Seals

...and more beautiful views of the shore we were about to walk on.

The sand was a beautiful rich gold color because of rusting iron deposits.

The walk was absolutely stunning!  I can't really describe it in words so I'll show you through pictures.  Although I will say one thing, it's really nice to walk through jungle when it's not overgrown on the trails.  We had a whole different experience walking amongst dense bush and not fighting our way through it.  No mud, no steep climbs, just easy walking and incredible beauty around us.  It was a nice change from the TA.

Wide path=happiness. Glad not to be fighting nature for a change

 Crossing a very wide inlet

 Lucky for us the tide was out

 Beautiful Bridges

 Walking Bark Bay

Cuban coconut beans and rice for dinner! Yum!

We stayed at bark bay campsite, which was pretty crowded but not overly so.  We slept right next to the ocean and enjoyed what Cody called a "romantic beach" setting. The moon was bright and glittering on the water, the waves were small, and there was no wind! This was our first really nice beach experience, I was in heaven...right up until Cody woke up with a mouse on his head!


How on earth had he gotten in? We searched all around the tent but couldn't find the hole.  And what did he want since there was no food in the tent? Damn.  It was almost perfect. I fell back asleep after we let the jumping mouse out the screen door.  It wasn't long after and that darn mouse had somehow let himself back in and was back by Cody's head.  That was it!  Time to find that hole.  Cody was determined so we emptied the tent at 5 am and flipped it over.  And there it was, on the bottom of the tent!  He had tunnelled his way in.  What a stealthy little guy!  After patching it up with duct tape we fell back asleep to peaceful waves and the sound of mice digging through other peoples food bags. Thankfully we were left alone the rest of the night.


February 2nd: Bark Bay and back to Kaiteriteri


The remainder of the hike was beautiful, and mouse free.  None of our stuff had been damaged except for the small hole in the tent.  Both of us were keen on getting back to Kaiteriteri before our favourite burger place closed (Gone Burgers) they really were amazing and moderately priced; we had already eaten there 3 times in a row! 


More beautiful views from the walk...

And back to Gone Burgers!  We were lucky enough to get a hitch right at the trail head and made before they closed.

The fourth and final gone burger, it was amazing!

We decided to stay another night in Kaiteriteri then hitch back to the TA trail at St. Arnaud.  It was probably going to be an all day affair as it was a long way to hitch back to a very remote area. Wish us luck!

Havelock and the Pelorus River Track

January 27th: Zero day Havelock



Havelock turned out to be a very artsy little town



We toured the gallery

Saw a really neat museum of taxidermy and sculpture animals.

Having an underwater experience inside

Back in the forest again

The Blue Moon backpackers was filled with backpackers from the TA. You'd think they'd give us a better discount for filling up their hotel.

Dinner time

Ken and Cam packing up for the next trip

Gil and his ridiculous box from the post office

I had the brilliant idea to shed some weight from our packs and mail anything unnecessary to the next town. We were going to carry 8 days of food in a high alpine section so any weight saved would be a blessing for the next trek. After weighing the package we found that between us we had shed 15lb! Losing weight never felt so good. We made one sketchy call and shipped our sleeping pads but kept the tent. Our reasoning was that we'd be in huts most of the time and would only use the tent in emergencies. Hopefully we won't miss them too much!

That's what 8 days worth of food looks like for one person

January 28th: Havelock to Captain hut (Rat avenue)



We waved the majority of the hikers off in the morning as I continued writing my last blog entry. We decided to hitch the 10 miles of windy narrow HWY rather than walk it to the start of the track.

Once out of the hostel and on the road we stood for a couple of hours before finally getting a hitch. Luckily it was the best hitch we could have gotten. Our ride happened to live just a few kilometers down the dirt road that lead up to the Pelorus River track. On the ride up she cautioned us to beware while hiking up to the trailhead. Apparently there were cult members that lived all around the trailhead. She even pointed one of the members out to us. She said "whatever you do don't go up to the last gate by the trailhead. The owner was one of the oldest cult members" The cult (she claimed) was responsible for bringing meth into the area. We thanked her for the ride and continued up the road; refusing any other ride offered to us- just in case they were cult members. After an hour of baking on the dirt road, Ken and Cam pulled up riding with none other than the very person our hitch had warned us about. Cody quickly refused the ride, but I objected. With 4 of us we could overpower him easily, besides Ken and Cam had no idea they had accepted a ride from a cult member...so into the meth mobile we went. I asked him a few questions that might make him reveal that he was actually apart of the cult. Unfortunatly he didn't crack. But thankfully, he did drop us off at the trail head without trying to convert us. Once out of the vehicle we told Ken and Cam about who they were in the car with. We spent the next part of the track debating about the truth of what we had been told about cults and meth dealings.

On the way to the hut we found a beautiful swimming hole. But we're very quickly chased off by millions of sand flies.

At the hut Peter confirmed at least the meth side of our story. Apparently he had gotten a ride up the trailhead by a local who complained that last year's earthquake could have taken out the meth lab. Half the story was confirmed! And we weren't going to wait around to see if the other half was true.


While hanging out at the hut we saw several mice scurrying through the grass around the hut...hmmm.  Not a good sign to see mice during the day.  Someone had also written "Mouse House" on the door of the hut.  No relief outside or in, we were in for a fun night.


Cody and I had to sleep in our tents because the bunks in the hut were too small to fit 2 and we had to share a down quilt to sleep with.  We had sent our sleeping pads ahead to save weight for this long section thinking that we could stay in the huts.  Well we thought wrong but both of us made due by pitching the tent outside and shoving a bunk mattress into the tent. Lesson learned, sometimes you can't skimp on everything to save weight!  Although we were enjoying our lighter than normal packs; between Cody and I we had dropped 15lbs worth.

That night we woke up to screams, not terrified screams but angry screams.  Gill had left food in his tent and a mouse had chewed a hole and was stuck inside.  Cody and I giggled, happy that we had gone into "bear proof mode" and all our food was in a mouse proof box away from the tent. We lay awake listening to everyone around us hitting the sides of their tents, and Gill yelling every now and again because rats were crawling all over his tent.  Apart from running into our tent lines and strumming them like guitar strings we were left alone by the rodents.


That morning We found out that Ken and Cam had a hole in their tent because of an empty chocolate wrapper that was left inside. Gill had holes and had been bothered non stop because he didn't know about the mouse proof box and had kept all his food inside his tent.  But the worst was poor Marylyn, a French TA hiker who had left a plastic water container and her water filter outside.  The mice had chewed holes in both making them useless for the rest of her trip.  Quite devastating considering how crucial filtering water is while your traveling!


We all decided to get the hell out of Pelorus River and into the high alpine Richmond Range. 

January 29th: Captain Hut to Hacket Hut

Our party split off into a few different groups. There were two routes to get to the next hut, one high (going up to 1000 meters) and one lower ( going up to 600 meters) The lower trail was the old TA route and the higher was the new one. So far the trail had been relatively good for TA standards, but from experience we know how quickly the conditions can change while walking the TA.  Gill and Cody wanted to take the low route which might be faster since we weren't going to climb as high.  Ken, Cam, and Peter decided to take the newer high route that afforded nice views and had a large hut (with flushing toilets) on top.  In hindsight had I known about the flushing toilets I would have pushed more for the new route- nice things like flush toilettes mean nice trails that lead up to them. Cody, Gill and I separated and took the low route- which ended up being a rough goat track that sidled along a mountain the whole time.

                        Giant turned over tree

More swing bridges

They have cicadas here just like back home but miniature in size

For those who don't know "sideling" is a rough guideline, usually no wider than a single foot that sidles the side of a mountain instead of the ridge. Sideling is slow going, scrambling over trees, inching our way passed washed out sections, and tip toeing on very fragile "trail" that tends to crumble under foot.  It was at this point that I was starting to get mad, this could have been a nice trail but the people who made it hadn't put in the effort, nor had they maintained it.  The section coming up was supposed to have a lot of high alpine sidling. Which I wasn't too keen on, also it was supposed to be incredibly steep and very slow going.  Cody's knees were not happy with this trail and neither were mine. Also with bad weather forecasted for the time we were to be in the high country that pretty much sealed the deal for us both- We decided to skip the upcoming Richmond Track; so in a way it was good that we had done the old TA trail because we had a taste of what it would be like to "sidle" for a whole day.  We had decided it wasn't worth the risk of injury.


The old trail finally joined up with the new one and everything instantly improved al the way to Hackett Hut. 

As if to confirm our choice we ran into a NOBO (North bound) TA hiker named Lucas who had just done the Richmond track.  We asked him if they were his favourite section of the trail, after some thought he answered "No, Waiu was my favourite part. The Richmond's are very steep and challenging but not the most beautiful."  Most of the time they are covered in clouds so a nice view from the top is impossible.  Lucas was on his way out, and was making his way over to the Abel Tasman Track.  That was name we'd heard over and over again.  It was supposed to be very beautiful, and actually enjoyable since it was a Great Walk.  Cody and I were irritated that we had missed so many good sights because we had stuck closely to the TA on the North Island.  Lucas had described his hike of the TA on the South Island which included a lot of detours to interesting spots areas that were not a part of the trail.  We decided we wanted to change the way we hiked and allow time for detours to see some of the other natural wonders that weren't on the TA trail.  Cody and I hadn't much time to stay in New Zealand and we wanted to see more than just the TA since it had become clear to us that most of the cool stuff that NZ had to offer wasn't actually on the TA trail.  New plan: We were going to hike most of the TA trail but use it like a highway to other places and get off every now and then to visit other areas. It was a relief, both of us were ready for a change.  We would start off by detouring to  Abel Tasman to walk an easy 36km beautiful trail by the beach.

The Queen Charlotte Track to Havelock

January 24th: Camp Bay to Bay of Many

Today was our first day of hiking on the trail. 32 kilometers in total (trail notes only said 30) All together it was a very mild track. We hiked with two people, patrick (TA hiker) and a french day hiker named julian who was taking 9 months off to travel the world. Cody and I have discovered that Americans really do get the short and of the stick with it comes to vacation. The views today were stuning, and weather very hot!

We hiked from sea level, through the mountains, and finally up ridgeline. Once settled into camp on top of the ridge the Weka started moving in from all sides. Then the goats came around; I never realized how musky those males were.

Enjoying the view

The view

When we finally crawled into the tent for bed, the night crew came by.... Probably 4 different possums, rats, mice, and (lucky us) a small group of peacocks that decided our tent site would be a good place to battle each other. I've never slept next to a circus but now I have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.

January 25th: Bay of Many to Davies Bay

Because we hadn't gotten any sleep we slept in a bit more than we should have, which meant hiking longer in the heat. It did actually get to be quite hot - my thermometer gauge read about 90. Not what we thought South Island weather was going to be like. Guess the mountains and cold would come later.

More spectacular views of the sounds

After sweating about a full liter each, we rolled into Davies Bay ready for dinner and bed. We parked our tent a little close to a tree, which was a bad idea since the possums paid us multiple visits. After about an hour of relentless badgering I made the call to move the tents away from the trees. We might have lost the battle with the possums, but we won the war and finally got some uninterrupted sleep!

January 26th: End of Queen Charlotte to Havelock

We slept in till about eight, then had a light breakfast. Cody's stomach had been bothering him for days, causing him to eat less. Both of us were looking forward to getting into Havelock around lunch to pig out. We walked the short bit out of the beautiful mountains and onto the highway. From there we got a hitch into town from a very nice Swiss couple. It was also our first hitch in an RV! Thank you Micheal and Sabrina! Generally only local Kiwis have been giving us rides.

After they had dropped us off near Havelock we decided our first order of business was dropping off our bags and food! We got a recommendation to eat at this funny little restraunt that served mussels. Apparently Havelock is the self proclaimed mussel capital of the world. The mussels are harvested from 90 mile beach and transplanted in the calm clear waters of the sounds.

 At least it was a very popular motorcycle hangout

It's hard to eat when you're being watched

We got the sampler plate which was more like art than food.

Cody decided to have a glass of white wine with his meal. This is probably the fanciest picture of a smelly hiker fresh off the trail. We were a little out of place, but enjoyed ourselves immensely (even if our surrounding company thought we were smelly)

Our hitch had also happened to be eating at the same restaurant. Later on they gave us their contact info and told us to look them up if we were ever in Switzerland. One great thing about NZ is having the possibility of making friends from all over the world!

We planned to zero in Havelock the next day and prepare ourselves for the tougher sections coming ahead.