Activity Summary
Friday 17th February - Day 169 (continued)
Drive to Abel Tasman
Afternoon & beer in the Beached Whale
Saturday 18th February - Day 170
Abel Tasman Eco Tours boat trip around the national park
Anchorage Bay coffee & snack
Mosquito bay lunch & chill
Sunday 19th February - Day 171
Kaiteriteri beach & chill day
Monday 20th February - Day 172
Kaiteriteri beach & chill day
Tuesday 21st February - Day 173
New of our cancelled Interislander ferry
Drive to Picton
Rock Ferry winery
Jammy Interislander journey to Wellington & North Island
Stay in Wellington Top10
Summary
Abel Tasman
The national park is pretty nice from what we saw. Luke would have done the great walk if he was able to book the 1 hut he needed to along with coordinating the tide, which would have given him a great view of the area. Alas this didn’t come to fruition but the boat tour we did gave us some great views of the national park / track that definitely gave a better view.
Coasts and beaches aren’t the things that drive us to a place but we had a great time chilling here and changing up the pace of life.
Kaiteriteri
The place is quite interesting because half of the area is just a giant space for a campground setup. We were camped about a 2 minute walk from the gorgeous beach and everything was just super easy and chilled. Definitely helped that there was glorious sunshine every day - couldn’t have asked for better beach weather.
We actually didn’t explore any of Kaiteriteri because we were too zen.
Accommodation
Kaiteriteri - Kaiteriteri Recreation Reserve
Number of nights - 4
Price per night per person - £14
Our opinions are split on this place. Nicola wasn’t a fan because the lack of a common room where we could relax in and away from the heat meant that we had to hide in the next door pub, which in turn meant we spent a lot more money that would otherwise have on lemonade and beer.
Luke however, at this point in the NZ trip and having spent barely any money on beer, loved the location, the beach and that he could spend money on beer because he ‘needed to’.
The rest of the facilities were pretty decent; nice kitchen and decent enough bathrooms but there is little comfortable respite from ozone-holed NZ sunshine.
Diary
[Continued]
After getting the car fixed up Luke certainly felt some nerves driving to Abel Tasman, where prior fear of minor damage had never crept in. When we again hit small patches of gravel road both of us just winced the entire time until safely through. NZ roads are just horrible.
Once we had checked into the Kaiterteri campsite we pitched up the tent, which was pretty difficult in the sunshine but Luke will find any excuse to take off his shirt. Nicola was far less comfortable in the heat than he was, reluctant to start the ‘free the jebs’ movement in NZ.
Nicola was excused to go to the local bar, the Beached Whale, which had opened just as we were done pitching, as she wasn’t feeling great on such a lack of sleep and the stress of the day. Luke stayed behind to clean and photoshoot Nicola’s bane (the tent) in order to put it online and sell in a few weeks.
In standard fashion, Nicola got a lemonade and Luke got a beer (Panhead APA - nice beer) which we nursed for a good hour and half in order to stake our claim to being acceptable table occupiers while both having our heads buried in iPads & phones. The place never got overly busy while we were there so we really didn’t feel all that guilty (a lemonade was £3 and a beer £7 so we didn’t want to blow all our day's budget on ‘required’ drinks) and took off earlyish in order to go and cook dinner. We did miss a cracking live band set in what can only be described as NZ’s classier equivalent of a Benidorm all inclusive night out. The average age of the people here was well into retirement and from the window we could see plenty of them dad/grandad dancing. Don’t think we missed much.
Once the sun had gone down the evenings were very cool so we ate in the tent, Luke cracked open his Blanc de Blanc vino and we had an early night.
The one thing we had planned to do while in Abel Tasman (we had been very laxed in our proactivity before Golden Bay where we again winged it) was to try and see as much as we could of the national park. The best way to do this we concluded was get a boat tour, rather than one of the numerous water taxis that did beach / great walk drop offs, in order to see as much of the area as we could.
We opted for a small boat tour having had better experiences with these kinds of operators in the Fiordlands, so we went with Abel Tasman Eco Tours that would be a 6 hour trip along the south side of the national park up to the Tonga marine reserve with some stopovers on some beaches. It did come with a pretty hefty price tag of £110 each but we felt that this offered us some very easy tourism that just suited our energy levels at this point.
The meet time was 8.45am in Marahau at the start of the Abel Tasman track. Nicola hadn’t slept all that well so we had (what was becoming more customary for our earlier starts) a car breakfast.
We were picked up by Heather (tour lead) in a tractor pulling along the tiny boat we would be touring in. There were only 8 of us on the tour but the tiny boat would likely have only accommodated another 2 people. Thankfully it was a pretty calm day in comparison to the day previously where wind had made putting up the tent pretty difficult.
The whole experience of being driven as a passenger of a boat on the back of a tractor was quite amusing. We joined the launch point queue and were in the water pretty quickly.
Once in the water we would learn that any slight amount of wind would cause this boat a fair amount of bother and for the first ¾ of the tour we would be driving directly into a headwind that rocked the boat a lot. It took a lot of concentration for Heather to navigate the wakes, waves and watching her brace up and down on the regs made for an uncomfortable ride. Safe to say, this wasn’t going to be a relaxing tour and we both went furthest into the boat, holding onto whatever we could (Luke did smash his head against some metal poles which wasn’t pleasant) and the views weren’t great looking through plastic coverings.
The first landmark was a rock aptly named split apple rock for obvious reasons. There was a water taxi having a less pleasant experience of the rock as the engine clearly was fudged so they were all bailing into another vessel that was trying to help. It did however ruin that perfect insta photo we so desperately desire (not).
We stopped off at a variety of points on the water to take in the views, talk a bit about the history and the wildlife. The formation of the Abel Tasman national park was a particularly interesting story, initially going to be cleared for a road until a woman who lived in the current national park protested and lobbied against the government for the argument to be won after getting signatures from the Dutch government. The park was then called Abel Tasman after the first European (Dutch) to ‘find’ New Zealand, although he never landed after being chased off by hostile Maori’s.
At these stop offs the boat had some particularly aggressive swaying in the sea. Nicola did really well in not letting it get to her but her tactic of staring into the distance and focussing on nothing else meant these stop overs were less informative for her.
At the first beach landing we had some coffee and snacks at Anchorage Bay where we got chatting to the rest of the group. As the youngest, we brought the average age down quite considerably.
The nicest place we stopped at while on the water was the Tonga marine reserve. It was pretty sheltered from the wind which meant the sea was calm and a beautiful see-through turquoise blue with a load of seals chilling on the shores. When we were asked whether someone could whistle loudly Luke was very quick to put his name forward and then hilariously crumbled under the pressure with a whole lot of misfire. His half pathetic whistle however did get the desired response of confusing the baby seals to stir and call back, rising to give a much better show after a few minutes composing himself as Nicola berated him in front of all these strangers. She's a mean one Mr Grinch.
On the way back towards the harbour there was a short stop over at some arches on the coast (apparently people get married under them when the tide is out) and then on to Mosquito bay for lunch & a chill. Lunch was provided by Eco and was actually pretty decent - nice loaded cheese & ham croissant with a chocolate muffin. We had a short walk around the beach together before Nicola went to chat to the rest of the tour group talking politics. Luke was happy sunbathing and going for a swim on his tod.
The way back was pretty calm, minus the boat boarding the waiting tractor on the beach which it landed with an ominous hull breaking thud. Turns out it was all fine.
Once back at the campsite we went back to the Beached Whale for a beer & lemonade before cooking and chilling in the tent.
We had absolutely nothing planned for the day but to relax so we slept as long as we could before the sun rising started cooking us inside the tent and then spent the morning chatting to friends and fam.
With the UK now asleep we had some food and spent the day on Kaiteriteri beach which was on the doorstep of the campsite. It was a really nice beach. It was fairly busy with it still being the weekend and the sun was glorious. The water was a decent temperature so getting in wasn’t horrenous but we couldn’t spend much longer than 5/10 minutes floating around.
It was just nice to really do very little, relax in the sun and go for a wade when we got too warm. We could even go get lunch on the cheap from our tent and the kitchen.
Our evening again consisted of a beer, lemonade, leftovers and finally getting around to watching the last LOTR film. Although because we are weak and old, we would have to split this over 2 evenings.
We made some more calls back to the UK and then opted to start the arduous process of getting Chops ready for the sale. Luke managed to score a hoover from the reception of the campsite so we spent the morning cleaning the inside of the car and then got some snaps for the internets.
With a sense of accomplishment for the day we were very happy to continue relaxing on the sunny beach and do little else with our day.
The local shop was quite expensive and as we hadn’t ventured out much from Kaiteriteri we had little food so decided we had no choice but to eat at the Beached Whale. This cost was reduced by well over 50% however as they had a take away menu (rather than sit in for food) so it was a bit of a no brainer to get that and eat it in our tent with the rest of the LOTR film. It was fairly decent food actually although far too much and the food babies were real.
Nicola didn’t have a particularly great night but was kind enough not to ruin Luke’s sleep. Surprisingly.
As we were drifting on the night before Nicola had realised that our rebooked ferry had problems. The initial ferry we were supposed to be on at 2pm the next day had already been cancelled; we were luckily put on the next service that day at 6pm. Turns out this luck had run out and this ferry also was suffering engine problems and had also been cancelled. There was however very little we could do at 11pm as the backpacker facebook group was going nuts.
So the first conversation we had at 7am was what the fudge were we going to do. We called Interislander up who were insanely unhelpful and said nothing could be done for a month - a pretty ridiculous outcome especially given we had read and heard people were abandoning their cars, flying and then will pick up when shit isn’t hitting the fan. We really felt for the people who had hire cars they wouldn’t be able to return. 2 out of the 6 ferries that traverse the Cook Strait were working. An absolute shambolick company.
We were not prepared to wait it out on the South Island until then so made revised plans to extend our stay in Picton for a day, try to jump on a ferry that had space and then failing that, sack it and sell the car in Christchurch before going to the States. This would mean missing out on New Plymouth and of bigger regret, the Tongariro crossing, but we potentially had little choice.
We packed up and then spent the rest of the morning making contingencies for accommodation in Christchurch before driving over to our hostel in Picton.
We debated stopping over at the Pelorus bridge on the way over to Picton but the morning's dreary curveballs had robbed us of any energy and the thought of stripping off for a swim felt like too much. The only stops we made were for food, fuel and Luke revisiting Rock Ferry in Blenheim, his favourite cellar door experience in NZ, to drink through some pain and come away with a delicious bottle of Sauvignon blanc. This certainly helped his mood, not so much Nicola’s however although he had done 80% of the driving up this point so earnt his break.
Once in Picton at around 5pm we checked into our hostel, which was very close to the ferry terminal, and then rather than getting settled we decided to go speak to the Interislander people in person on hearing that there is a waiting list (despite the phone operators telling us there wasn’t) and that trying our luck at the terminal could work. We were incredibly pessimistic however given 2 out of 6 of the ferries were running.
Nicola parked up and Luke went in to speak to the ferry people who were all very apologetic and clearly fed up with the shit situation they had been put in. It was confirmed our ferry was dead in the water, something that they should have given us by email and text but never came through, and the magic list of those waiting for some hope of traversing the Cook Strait appeared much to Luke’s surprise.
As his details were written onto the piece of paper the big boss of the ferry operations came running through shouting that anyone wanting to get on the ferry at 6.30pm should go through to the terminal now. The counter lady told Luke to go quickly and get in the queue and completely taken aback by the whole palava ran to Nicola, dropped our room key back at the hostel in a hidden place so we could get access to it if everything went tits up and then joined the queue.
We were waiting in line for a good hour and half and at no point was it certain we would get a space. The ferry was being used for freight only us as part of the peasant brigade were basically fighting against each other for what tiny space was available. We seemed to be in an incredible position. Somehow we had managed to time it ridiculously well in being in the terminal with about 5 other groups of people (so not many) as the roll call came through and then throughout our wait time a mass of people were piling in behind us as the call list was actioned. Our emotions went through a bit of a rollercoaster of how have we ended up here, will we or won't we get on and just being tired and feeling rough as shit. Again we had to book accomodation at the Wellington Top10 on the hope that we would arrive, potentially throwing away more money but we needed a place to sleep. Last minute hostels are non-existent in Welly and hotels are unbelievably expensive.
The relief only hit when we made it onto the ferry. And there was not a whole lot of space left for other cars either, maybe 30 max behind us.
So somehow we managed to board a ferry a day earlier than planned. Our day had gone from panic, to changing our plans to throwing money at accomodation that we wouldn’t use. Nicola was done with NZ once we had left Franz Josef and now was well and truly done with it. Luke was happy he was able to get some final big walks rather than the anti-climatic ‘it’s now all over’. So all in all, a fairly good outcome.
We both plugged in our headphones and spent the time on the ferry doing little but feeling run down and watching tv on our iPads.
On disembarking Luke drove to the Top10, Nicola grabbed the key code and we parked up in the non-powered site spot. For the first time we would both need to sleep in the car, so Nicola being the resident expert in how to make this as comfortable as possible, took the lead. We managed to fit most of our things in the front two seats, with a few non-important items under the car. We had our rollmats and sleeping bags trying to offer as much cushion as possible which was ok for the one night. Nicola’s 1am yoga apparently helped her settle down after a day of being in the car, ferry and barely moving.
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