Last weekend, Dean Michalak, a traveller from Germany and intern at Top South Media, took a tramp through the Abel Tasman National Park. He shares his experience of what it’s like walking one of New Zealand’s most beautiful hiking tracks.
I am normally not the biggest hiker, but when I got to Abel Tasman National Park recommended for the millionth time by very passionate Kiwis, I knew it was the time to lace up my hiking boots again.
So far, I’ve done two bigger hikes in Aotearoa, which were the Tongariro Crossing and the Mount Taranaki summit hike. So, when I started doing the research to plan out my route, I was a little bit overwhelmed by how many possibilities there were to discover the park at my own pace.
In this situation, my guest father, who used to be a guide in the park, was nice enough to give me a rundown on where I should start my adventure and where I could end it.
He also highlighted the fact that tides were something I had to watch out for, due to estuaries crossing the hiking path, with the main one between Awaroa and Totaranui.
It felt like the right distance to start off from Onetahuti and walk back to the starting point, and when I had finally booked everything, I was stoked to be hitting the road again soon.
The tramp itself started off very smoothly. I got picked up by a shuttle bus very early in the morning, and about two hours later flew over the water’s surface towards Onetahuti, with a quick stop at the weird rock formation called Split Apple Rock.
When I came off the boat, I started talking with a lovely elderly woman named Anne. She told me that she was originally from the south of France, but due to her son living in Raglan, she spends the winter months here to do, as I could have guessed, hiking. She had been on the trail from the start, which astonished me, considering she was 75 years old, and throughout the next days I saw her a couple of times at the camp sites I stayed at.
One thing I noticed were the weka, which ran all around the camping sites. Pretty soon, I learned that you can’t leave them alone with any form of food or even your packed and zipped-up backpack. Several times throughout my hike, they ran away with bags of food, and one even tried snapping away a muesli bar while I was eating it!
When I finally started walking, I soon realized how different it was from everything I had seen before. It seemed to be a mix of the typical Kiwi bush that I had experienced and an almost rainforest-like mix of vegetation. Lianas and tendrils crossed my path, ferns sprouted everywhere along the path, and during nighttime, you could hear the sounds of birds and other animals communicating with each other.
Despite these almost rainforest-like characteristics, it was never really humid and, at times, even windy, which always gave me motivation when I felt like my backpack was getting heavier with each step and my calves were burning. That, and the fact that while hiking, you passed by a number of beaches and smaller creeks, which really invite you to take a swim when the sun comes out, usually around lunchtime.
Cleopatra’s Pool stood out to me during my hike, because of its crystal-clear waters and the fact that not many people were there when I decided it might be worth a look. After three days of walking, sleeping very well at night, taking swims in rivers, and sitting by these beautiful beaches in the middle of nowhere, I can definitely say that the hike was unlike anything I’ve seen so far.
I am very grateful to have been able to do the tramp, and for anybody who is contemplating it, to me, it was worth every single scratch and sore muscle.
