An accessible Abel adventure
Pamela Wade is joined by her daughter for an unforgettable kayaking adventure along the Abel Tasman National Park coast.
It had been a horrible night. It was cold, the sand under my tent was packed as hard as concrete, my feeble yoga mat had provided laughable padding, the epic snorer in the next tent was so close we might have been sharing a bed and, to cap it all off, the waves were too noisy.
I’d thought they would lap soothingly on to the sand and lull me to sleep, but instead they slapped and crashed all night long.
There were also rowdy birds squawking way before dawn. I was not impressed.
Emerging from my tent, I staggered away from the little campsite down to the empty beach. There, a stream had etched a skeleton tree of fine black rivulets across the yellow sand and, beyond it, the sea was now smooth and glossy.
The low sun threw long shadows from the weather-sculpted rocks surrounding this little cove and the colours all around were richly saturated: gold, turquoise, green and blue. It was gorgeous.
Then my daughter Holly brought me freshlybrewed coffee – and all was well with the world.
We were into our second day of our little adventure: two days paddling along the coast of Abel Tasman National Park, followed by a day of tramping. The two nights were under canvas at DOC campsites, self-catered and independent.
The trip was bookended by time with Abel Tasman Kayaks, which picked us up from Nelson and drove us out to its base at Ma¯ ra¯ hau for a very thorough briefing, including instructions on what to do in every possible scenario. Most of the group were doing a guided tour but, after proving that we could handle our kayak, Holly and I set off on our own, heading across the first of many bays.
Advised, because of strong winds further out, to stop short of tackling the alarmingly-named Mad Mile that day, we pootled along towards Watering Cove.