An Abel Tasman Eco Adventure!

Wildlife spotting in the Abel Tasman

The Abel Tasman coastline is dotted with offshore islands, covered in forest and holding a vast amount of wildlife, from shags to an island home to 300 New Zealand fur seals! Before, we’ve only appreciated how they are great to look at and watch behave (like the seal pups in Whakariki, n’awwww!), and now Stu is telling us some fascinating facts about them, like how the shags swallow rocks to help them get deeper in the water, how seals can hold their breath for 10 minutes or so… It’s stuff we are definitely going to impress our friends with later…

Split Apple Rock

One of the islands is the unusually shaped Split Apple Rock. If you’re ever getting a water taxi from Marahau or Kaiteriteri, then it’s likely you’ll get to go right up close to the rock. It feels like we get to know every detail of this rock, from the colours, to the marine life calling it home, to the reason why it is shaped like split apple.

Cake on the beach

Moving the boat along, we speed down the coast of the Abel Tasman, passing coastal cliffs teaming with trees in a forest with a canopy notable of the same height. Stu stops the boat at various islands before we land on Te Pukatea Bay.

This golden sand beach with its coarse sand grains is our coffee break stop. Much like the first Abel Tasman Eco Tour we checked out, we have cake! Lemon with a gooey centre or coffee with a chocolate gooey centre… We have both!

Eating kawakawa

Stu is then keen to take us on a 45-minute hike through the forest and to a lookout. Most of our group come for the hike where, yet again, we end up eating plants. This time, Stu hands over the kawakawa, an antioxidant among other benefits. Stu shoves the leaf in his mouth no problem, but we can barely keep a straight face. We are too weak for kawakawa…

The Abel Tasman National Park in virtual reality!

A hike in the wilderness

All the sounds we hear in the forest from New Zealand’s vocal birds are finally put into context when Stu points out what each one is. We stop plenty of times to look at various vegetation in a forest very different from what we saw on the “Promised Land” tour.

The group gets an amazing vantage point from the top of the hill. We see island, various coves which Stu has a story for each, and behind us, as we saw from between the trees is our boat still on the beach. Pheww. (Although we don’t mind getting stuck here to be honest).

Oops…

As we get left behind at the lookout taking photos and generally being annoying travel writers, we try to catch up with the rest of the group. But after running all the way down the trail we just climbed up, we say: “Wait, didn’t Stu say we were doing a loop walk…” Sh*t!

We run all the way back up the hill, huffing and puffing, sweating like a pig, until we find our group at a lookout over Te Pukatea Bay. We were the bad tourists here today.