Abel Tasman hike

New Zealand has endless places to hike, but nevertheless they have nominated a few trails to be the best in the country, they call them the Great Walks, the premier walking tracks of New Zealand. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing was one of them, did that on the North Island and yes, it was pretty spectacular. Time to tick another one of the list, The Able Tasman Coast Track.
We were packing backpacks in the hostel after a visit to the nearest supermarket, and I was pretty proud of my own. 4 days and 3 nights at some of the most beautiful coastline in New Zealand.
I had come up with the perfect combination: 3 strong beers (10%), 3 cans of tuna (lemon pepper variant), a plate of dark chocolate and a backup of mint just in case, 3 cups of Shin Noodle (the best there is, period), 2 packs of Chocofanter ripoffs and a variety of granola with all sorts of fillings. That combined with my new camping equipment, I was ready to take on the NZ beaches, how hard could it be?
In New Zealand hiking is not called hiking, but instead tramping. It makes sense when thinking about it, but still it sounds funny to me.
Neither Ryan or I had a tent, so Alvaro was kind enough to borrow us his tent and share Nubian's tent, then we didn't have to invest in another tent, that was great. From left to right, representing Chile, we have Alvaro, Ryan from Canada, Nubian from Chile and the guy behind the keyboard.
With a backpack around 17 kilos and blisters still not healed from the previous hike, we headed off. I mean, how difficult could it be.
The track went through a lot of rain forest with beach access every now and then to some pretty awesome beaches only found in the movies. We were not the only ones who had ever heard about this area, there were plenty of boats around the area with people just coming there for the day to enjoy the beaches. They were suntanning when a couple of guys with big backpacks walk by.
Some of the areas were just too great to walk past, so we made sure to visit all of them, even if some of them were a little out of the way we were walking.
The track had a couple of places where there was no path through the forest because there were cliffs and it wasn't suitable to make a path there.
However, these places had big bays that could be crossed at low tide. Since there is only low tide twice a day, we had to plan our days according to the tidal times.
The lady at the red lipstick lady had done that the day before for us and booked the right campsites. There was a 4 hour window to cross the bays, so it was quite flexible, but still a lot of kilometers between two crossings so doing more than one a day was tricky.
The first campsite we came to was called Bark Bay, where we had the beach 10 meters away from our tents, really nice. There were some primitive toilets and a building with some running water serving as a kitchen with running water. The water had to be treated though, I brought my filtering bottle, so it was nice finally having a use for it.
The first day we had been hiking about 21km, with our full backpacks, the hiking boots of mine were still not compatible with my feet and I had gotten a few blisters here and there, 7 of them. Both pinky toes, the side of the foot and on the knuckle of the big toe bone. Some of the blisters were on top of the Tongariro blisters, so they were pretty bad, blood had to be drained from those every morning and they hurt quite a lot.
Had forgotten to fill up my first aid bag with additional band aids so had to use toilet paper and duct tape to make my own, or just put tape on top to avoid further friction. People were looking very concerned when I was sitting there with the knife cutting the blisters open, no worries, everything is under control.
In the morning we could cross another bay that had been full of water when we had arrived, now all empty with boats just stranded on the bottom. A guy was fixing something on his boat, at the bottom of it, quite easy for him to fix without having to lift the boat and dry dock it.
The walking the next couple of days were about 10-12 per day, and again took us past a lot of beautiful beaches and through landscape in the jungle that offered some really cool views from points on top of the ridges overlooking the beaches.
There were a couple of swinging bridges that were really swinging when crossing over. Get the steps right and it would swing violently, but only funny for the person doing it.
Since my feet were in quite bad shape I could only do one long stint every day, taking breaks was quite painful as the blood would starting pumping down to the feet when I was resting.
That meant I did a lot of walking on my own as the other guys needed breaks now and then and also wanted to stop and relax at some of the beaches. I didn't mind that, had a lot of time to enjoy what I wanted to do and see.
One day I was in pretty bad shape, didn't walk that fast and actually expected the guys to catch up with me any time. At some point I came to a sign that said "Lodge and Cafe" - hmmm, I am definitely going that way even if it means I have to go back up the same way.
I walked down the hillside for about half an hour or so and found a bar in the middle of the jungle, I thought I was dreaming. I walked up to the bar and they even had beers on tap, I couldn't stop laughing and the guy looked strangely at me. I ordered a beer, said down and enjoyed it, thinking the guys would show up any moment now. They didn't, so I ordered another beer, just because I deserved it and when that was empty they still had not arrived.
Hmm, what should I do? I had the tent for Ryan and myself, but didn't carry any of the food. If they were hungry, they would figure out to survive. I asked the bar if they had a menu, and they did. This was getting too funny, but hey, why not just take advantage of the options offered? I ordered a pepperoni pizza, expected a frozen re-heat pizza to be taken out of the freezer, but instead it was a home made pizza... I was just one big smile and downed it with another beer.
Well fed, no longer thirsty and just feeling in a good mood, I emptied my water bottle and asked to have it filled up with beer for the guys, I thought they deserved some cold beer as well. 5 minutes later I was on my way to the campsite which was only 30 minutes away. They guys still had not arrived, so I ended up splitting the cold beer with two German girls instead, haha
The campsite had approximately 134334253 mosquitoes and sand flies living there, it was horrible. We all dressed up with all our clothes and blankets to avoid being eaten alive, but they were everywhere. Ended up going to bed just after 20:00 because it was the only place that was not full of these critters. Next morning though we all woke up with big bumps and bites on the foreheads, and the tent full of sand flies and mosquitoes, but no idea how they got into the tent. For those unfamiliar with the sandfly, they are simple horrible. Their bite hurts, bleeds and is more itchy than a mosquito bite - and they seem to be everywhere
The last campsite we came to, I arrived pretty early on a very windy the afternoon. There were already a couple of people at the campsite, and they had picked some of the good spots where there was the least wind. Turned out they were from the US as well, up North in Seattle.
I put my tent up in the same end, maybe 3 meters from their tent. I laid down to relax a little and have one of my 10% warm beers, when an old guy came up and started talking to me. He asked me where I was from and what kind of work I did. Then he asked me if I knew what etiquette  meant, of course I said. Oh, you putting up the tent close to me and my friends is very bad etiquette, we think it is better if you move your tent. WTF? Why didn't these old farts stay in a hotel instead, good thing I am grown up and mature...
The next day we did the last stint, to the Separation point, the place where the two "oceans" meet. On on side it was all rowdy and on the other blue and totally calm, looked pretty interesting. This was officially the end of the hike, but we still had to walk back another 6km to get a lift back from one of the water taxis serving the coasts here. We were done walking around 14:30, but were not dropped off at the car until 18:00, pretty worn and tired.
We went to buy some beers and back at the hostel it was a very quiet night. The hike had been great, too many sandflies in my opinion, but I was told that it could be much worse at times.
The hike is said to take 5 days, it can easily be done in 3 with the right shoes and getting the timing right with the low tide. One guy I met earlier suggested we just take the water taxi up to the beach were we got picked up and do a short trek, because most of the beaches and bays we would see looked pretty much the same. He was kind of right and probably that is the way to do it if short on time, but we had a good time, it was fun