Abel Tasman NP - wonderful Kiwi's

December 14, 2011

Abel Tasman NP - wonderful Kiwi's

Sunday, November 13^th

We arrived early at the southern end of Abel Tasman National Park to begin our coastal hike (9am) along a portion of one of NZ’s great walks – we walked to Stillwell bay, along a beautiful coastline. Lots of sandy beaches, sailing and sea kayaking here. Abel Tasman National Park is the most visited national park in NZ, and since it is a Sunday, we see a moderate number of people, but hardly crowded. Abel Janszoon Tasman (Dutch: [ˈaːbəl ˈjɑnsoʊn ˈtɑsmɐn]; 1603–1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC (United East India Company). His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands. (Wikepedia) The Tasman sea is named after him (this sea lies between Australia and NZ and is one of the more dangerous seas on the planet, with lots of wind and big waves), and of course this national park in NZ is named after him as well. We were out hiking for about 5 hours. On our return we met Peter and Glennis (from the Nelson area, formerly from Christchurch, probably in their 60’s) along the trail. They were an absolutely delightful couple. They were well traveled having been fairly recently to Scandanavia (Glennis is partly descended from Swedes). They have enjoyed many beautiful places in the world, but travel has made them even more grateful for being Kiwi’s since NZ has so many varied and wonderful landscapes in such a small compact area. I took a wonderful picture of them, which I have included here at the end of the post. I regret that we didn’t get their last name, as they were such a vibrant and happy couple, so much fun to visit with. We would have enjoyed staying touch at some level with them. Donna noted what a highlight they and Chris Marsh were for her. Peter and Glennis gave us some recommendations on where to stay – where we ended up staying tonight (Capefoulwind), and the next night ( Lake Mahinapua). We ate a late lunch along the coast after our hike, then drove to the Westport area on the west coast. It was a beautiful drive – between two NP’s and drove through Bullers gorge ( a number of hair raising one-way sections in the gorge) We ended up freedom camping at Cape Foulwind (Peter and Glennis’ recommendation). There were some Kiwi’s, also freedom camping near us, and some not so nice German tourists illegally camping a ways from us. They camped in an area that was very clearly marked as a no camping area. They obviously camped there because there was a toilet in the parking lot there. They monopolized the toilet (we walked over from our legal site), but the worse came the next morning, when Donna watched them illegally dump their wastewater in a ravine near to where they camped. There are dump stations all over the place – this was terrible, and I’m sure such antics have contributed to NZ starting to limit freedom camping. The next day we saw them again, got the license number and reported them to the NP staff, who thanked Donna for doing so, as they noted that such behavior was indeed contributing to NZ’s crackdown on freedom camping. These German tourists were the exception – we met a number of other German tourists, here in NZ and later in Fiji, who were wonderful folks. Our “legal freedom camp site” has a great view of the ocean. We saw our first Weka at this campsite (we saw them the next day too, and I will include a picture with that post). They are flightless birds about the size of a chicken. This area is known for them – and is the only area we saw them.