Hiking in the Abel Tasman
Like many New Zealanders I have always loved the outdoors, going for walks in the bush, enjoying the peace. But, and that's a big But, I have found plenty of excuses not to go tramping. I mean that would require carrying a pack and there might be some hills involved. Well I think I had some kind of mid-life, brain fade, this year.
My friend and I have just come back from completing a 4-day tramp in the Abel Tasman National Park. This is a very lovely area. It has beautiful golden beaches, the sea is a clear turquoise and there's lots of lush native bush. DOC (Dept. of Conservation) provides Huts and camping sites along the way, so it isn't total roughing. We also discovered it provides lots of sandflies free of charge.
The first thing we found-out, is probably we should have done a trial run on our packs. It pays to find out if you can actually lift them when you are carrying them for 5 days. We were very careful with what we carried, very little in change of clothes, virtually none. Food was important; none of this dried rubber for us, real stuff, mushrooms traveled quite well, so do corn chips, afraid eggs aren't so good. A little boost is important too, discovered coffee liqueur' is a good at this, plus of course, scroggen (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate mix).
We decided we would tent. The huts are warm, but they also have mountain Bunks where 10 strangers sleep to one platform. So in our aged naiveté we thought that sleeping 3 nights on a hard thin mat in a tiny 2-man tent was a better idea. It's amazing how many times you turn over in a night, or better still things you can talk about, when you can't sleep.
The trip was incredible. The first laugh was when we needed to catch a boat to get to the beginning of the track. To get to the main boat we had to hop into a little runabout, off the beach timing with the waves. You know hop, with a heavy pack on your back, that just about tips you over. Then when we got to the bigger boat, we looked in horror when we realized we were going to have to clamber up, still with this pack. Thankfully some nice strong gentleman helped, whew! I could just visualize our trip ending the day we started.
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