Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

After a beautifully sunny and calm ferry ride across the Cook Strait, we had arrived in Picton on the South Island. We took a few snaps of the place and saw a seal swimming nearby the ferry, but then it was straight on to the Abel Tasman National Park.

The three highlights here were walking in the national park, kayaking, and our campsite itself!

The Barn, Marahau

I can’t recommend staying here enough! It’s a hostel and campground so the facilities are fantastic with two kitchens, a covered outdoor cooking area, free showers, free wifi, and a TV room with a massive DVD selection. This was so handy when we arrived to torrential rain on the first day – we watched all three of the Hobbit movies ha!

The location for the Barn is also just perfect. It’s right where the national park starts, nestled in a little valley with mountains surrounding it. You can see the ocean from all the campervan sites and it’s about 5 minutes to walk to the beach. Marahau is absolutely tiny, but Kaiteriteri is a 20 minute (8km) drive south if you need a supermarket, although the Barn does sell some basic supplies. We loved our three nights here!

Walks in the Abel Tasman National Park

You can only access most of the national park by walking or by boat. It’s a beautiful area with a gorgeous coast line and forests so we knew we had to get in there, but as we were on a budget we went for the walking option. 🙂

You can do one of New Zealand’s Great Walks here and take it all on for the 3-5 day option. But we’re not quite that hardcore! We just walked up the coast for two hours and then turned around. The sea is so blue and there are lovely golden beaches along the walkway, which meanders through the ferns, streams and little waterfalls of the forest. It was made better by the beautiful sunshine we had, but it really was gorgeous! If you’ve got more time (and energy) than us, you can walk right up to Anchorage and back, but it’s 3-4 hours each way.

Kayaking to Split Apple Rock

Split Apple Rock is a strange rock formation that basically looks like an apple that’s been cut clean in half down the middle! It’s just off the coast so surrounded by the beautiful turquoise waters and its bay is home to cormorants (or shags as the Kiwis call them?!) and little penguins! The penguins fish out at sea during the day so we didn’t see any of those, though.

We visited the bay (main pic) on our first proper day in this area by driving to the nearby car park and taking the 10 minute walk down to the bay. It’s so pretty! But the real treat was the following day when we headed down to Kaiteriteri for a half day kayaking trip. (Half price, thanks to BookMe!)

I was pleased to find that our kayaks had rudders to control the direction, like what we had in the Noosa Everglades. So much easier and less chance of me shouting at George haha! It was a bit daunting at first that we’d have skirts on our kayaks. I’d never used these before and was a bit wary of the whole turning over and being stuck thing. But the sea was calm as a millpond and the skirt stopped me getting so wet, so I was happy enough! 🙂

We paddled out of the bay through a small gap between the mainland and what looked like an island as it was high tide. I couldn’t believe that we’d ever been able to paddle through there when I saw it at low tide later. It just becomes part of the land with people climbing across the rocks! Nuts ha.

After that bit of excitement anyway… we plodded along the coast with our guide Sarah giving us the stories about the bays along the way. It was so, so pretty! I can’t get over how blue the sea is here! We had hoped to see seals but Sarah said right at the start it’s very unlikely, so we just put that out of our minds and enjoyed the scenery and birds. We went up to Split Apple Rock and then a little further so we could see the national park. It was lovely to see pretty little Marahau from the water! Then we cruised back and got ourselves some fish and chips on Kaiteriteri beach. Such a lush day!