Tramping the Abel Tasmin (and the battle of highway 60)

After spending the night in the pod-like sleeping chambers of the backpackers, I awoke to blue sky eager to begin my tramp. Still not free of my internet addiction however, I had decided to venture down to Motueka (the much bigger town about 25km to the south) to utilize their free internet at the library. My plan had been to hitchhike with Chris (my Canadian kayak guide friend), but I was unable to find him around the campsite and figured he went to work. I had planned on giving him a couple of beers I had leftover, but I’m sure he was happier to have something to do instead.

I stashed my backpack in a closet at the backpackers, and got a ride walking out of the entrance to the campground from an older Scottish guy who was vacationing before guest lecturing at a university in Christchurch. Upon arriving in Motueka I quickly found the library, although as it turns out I wasn’t the only backpacker to have figured out how to get on the internet for free. I signed up for a 30 min slot but still had about an hour to wait, so I scoped out the local DOC (Department of Conservation) office to kill some time. On the Abel Tasmin (and many of the other more popular tramps in New Zealand), reservations are required in advance for the huts and campgrounds sites in an effort to control the number of visitors to the national parks. The policy seems sound at first; however it only applies to those spending the night, not for day users. As I later discovered, in places like the Abel Tasmin (which is accessible nearly everywhere for day hikers by water taxi or kayak) this policy is about as effective as bailing a rowboat with a teacup. After ensuring that my reservations were in order (the DOC ranger was even impressed by the campgrounds I had selected), I checked my email for the last time and found my way to the edge of town to hitch back to Marahua.

Waiting at the city limit time was a young German guy with a large backpack on his shoulders who eyed me a bit suspiciously. Oblivious to his territorial air, I cheerfully greeted him as one road warrior to another, to which he gave a rather chilly reply. When I told him where I was going, he snorted. “That’s a tourist town, and tourists don’t pick up hitchhikers. You should go back to town and buy a bus ticket.” Smiling, I fought off the urge to tell him where to stick his advice, and instead continued walking out of town. “It’s going to be a long walk,” he called after me.

I walked another kilometer up the road and thumbed with determination next to rows of hops (which curiously are called Cascade hops like those in Oregon, although I think we grew them first), and just before desperation set in I caught a ride with a local French guy. I was so happy to have found a ride I gave him the last of my beer, hoping to appease the hitchhiking karma gods. He didn’t get me all the way to Marahua, but instead dropped me where the highway split off to Takaka to the northwest. And who was there waiting for me? The German.

There have been more than a few great battles in history involving Germans and Americans; along the banks of the Delaware River in the Revolutionary war, in the trenches near the river Marne during World War I, along the beaches of Normandy during World War II. More recently there has been a peace between the two great powers that has seen fruitful exchange (we got BMWs, they got David Hasselhoff), but the ghosts of history are not fully at rest, as I’m sure all present along the shoulders of highway 60 that day will attest to. The minutes stretched to hours as the ferocity of mental warfare flew back and forth across the pavement, thumbs flying in every direction. Flies withered and dropped from the air and birds cried in alarm as the tension mounted with each passing car. Finally, at long last, a vehicle coming from Marahua turned around at the intersection and opened its door to me, and I was borne away on my golden chariot to victory (in this case a Ford Focus). The British couple who picked me up claimed they had just forgotten their cell phone in the charger back in Marahua, but as I turned and looked in the face of my vanquished foe, I knew that freedom had won the day. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Stealthily I collected my backpack from the hostel and found my way to the trailhead, quite comforted by the knowledge that my itinerary for the next few days involved nothing but eating, sleeping, swimming, and hiking. The hour was beginning to get late, and many of the people I passed were heading in the other direction out of the park. My campsite at Akersten Bay was a mere 6km into the park, and I arrived there in the late afternoon with enough time to have a swim before dinner.
The site was absolutely magical. My tent site had been perfect, on a nice flat sandy space sheltered by trees that opened out to view the ocean just meters from the golden sand beaches sloping gently into turquoise waters free of rocks or seaweed. This particular campsite was quite small (only 4 tent sites and no hut), and I had the place to myself. As I dried myself in the sun I couldn’t help but think that this was all too good to be true. Apparently someone else had that same thought.

As I walked back up to my tent to collect my dinner supplies I noticed an out of place pile of grasses and moss a few feet away. As I moved closer to investigate, my heart sickened at the site of a corner of white paper. Moving the pile aside with a stick, the blasphemy was revealed. Someone had come to this place, this perfect site, this literal slice of paradise, and had taken a shit in it. They had left it there, unburied, in the middle of where I had been planning to sleep. And what’s worse, a perfectly good outhouse stood just 50 meters away. At first I was simply shocked, then incredibly sad, and then slowly but surely I became absolutely furious. I am still poisoned by it. It was, quite simply, one of the ugliest and most offensive things I have ever seen. I cleaned it up and moved my tent to another spot, and then spent the rest of the evening trying to recover something of the magic I had felt earlier in the day, but couldn’t. It was all polluted.

That night it began raining, not heavily, but just enough to leave everything a little damp by morning. The clouds did clear in time for the sunrise, and after swimming in the ocean I began to recover from the hideousness of the night before. I packed up my gear but elected to have a coffee break before leaving the bay, hiking along a nearby peninsula to watch the water taxis pour in. I was joined on the peninsula by a colony of sea birds, and observed with amusement some of the chicks taking their first flights. As the sun climbed higher in the sky I returned to my campsite and shouldered my backpack, and began the trek to the next site. This was to be my shortest day, although in my infinite foresight and wisdom I had neglected to bring a decent map along, and wound up accidentally exploring a hidden cove and an old ranger trail on my way to the campsite at Te Pukatea Bay. The skies became overcast, and I retired rather early that evening, doing suduko puzzles as the rain became louder and harder. The next day seemed like it could be fair in the morning, but by mid-afternoon the rain continued in earnest, dampening my gear and my spirits. I passed by hoards of day-hikers, of which it seemed the vast majority were Germans, or so I gathered by their accents and Jack Wolfskin jackets. The rain had finally let up by the time I reached my third campsite at Medlands Beach, and by the evening my favorite hiking companion (my shadow) had returned.

The clouds and overcast skies continued into the fourth day, but this time without any rain, for which I was rather thankful. My route was to take me across a couple of salt-water estuaries, both of which could only be crossed during low tide. As I arrived at the first estuary (which was the smaller of the two), I discovered that I had timed my crossing perfectly…for high tide. I backtracked to a nearby beach and began my long wait, eating granola and defending myself against the sand flies. As I sat there a power boat turned up full of Canadians, who seeing my predicament asked I wanted a beer. Is the pope Catholic?! They pulled ashore and we had a good chat, and they offered to ferry me across the estuary, or even take me all the way to my campsite. I chose the former, and in no time I was back on the trail as the sun finally broke through the clouds.

After hiking another couple of hours I found my second crossing at Aworora Bay, which was far larger. I rested and ate lunch at a hut along the shore, which was occupied by an older American couple and their son, who was a few years younger than I was. A second beer was offered (and gladly accepted), and as it turns out they were from California. Their son had contemplated going to Lewis and Clark and had a good friend who went to Willamette University, my alma mater. Just for fun, I asked for his friend’s name, who quite coincidentally just so happened to be a member of Willamette’s cycling team, and a heavy user of the Bike Shop I helped to found. A great big world, and a small one too. Love it. I thanked them for the beer and made my exodus across the bay into the sunset, arriving in time for dinner at Waiharakeke, my next campsite.

The sun decided to stick around the next morning, and I had a short hike to my next campsite at Anapai Bay, which was my furthest point north. Along the way I passed through Totaranui campground, which was the site of both the shuttle bus pickup and the ranger station, and noticed on a posted weather forecast that rain would be returning the following morning (although the same forecast had said the past three days should have been sunny...hmm). Setting my mental alarm clock for dawn, I continued working north, arriving at my campsite by midday and spending the afternoon eating the remainder of my food and lounging by the beach. At low tide I ventured over to some nearby tide pools (which were full of crabs and starfish) and really interesting rock formations, some still bearing the scars of quarrying (a lot of the stone from this part of the park was used to construct Wellington's capital buildings). I retired early that night as the sun went down, looking forward to a restful night before my early departure. As it turns out, mother nature had other plans.

There are no bears in New Zealand, or cougars, or really anything that could harm a person. As such, the concept of bear bags or hanging food from trees is rather foreign to the locals, who are quite used to keeping their food in their packs or tent. Over the course of the trip I had slowly succumb to this laziness, and left my food and garbage inside a couple of plastic bags inside my tent. Just as I was dozing off to sleep, something started growling outside, and in alarmingly close proximity to my head. Being alone in my campsite, I was momentarily paralysed by fear, wondering whether I had awoken some evil Maori spirit or escaped tiger. I shouted back and whatever it was seemed to go away, and after an hour of vigilant listening I had finally started to drift asleep once more. As if emboldened by my lapse in surveillance, the growler returned once more.

They say that every animal (including humans) experiences a flight or fight reaction when confronted with danger in the wild. Now normally I consider myself to be a bit of a passivist, but the growling had awoken something primal within me, as things tend to do when my sleep becomes seriously disturbed. Snatching my flashlight and knife I leapt from my tent to meet my enemy, searching in vain across the campsite for any trace of his retreat. The next twenty minutes saw a brutal display of chest beating and hitting things with a large stick before, feeling satisfied, I returned to my den. My quarry was not so easily intimidated however, and within a few minutes his cowardly growling had returned. I renewed my stick-on-tree onslaught with renewed vigour, but despite my continuing taunts to show itself and face its destiny, my foe seemed content to hide amongst the shadows and wait for my watch to falter with sleep. Finally, the rational and civilized mind persevered, and I took my food and hung it from a nearby tree. Now some might see this as giving in to an inferior mammal, while others might be wondering why I persisted in running around in the dark with a stick in my boxers hitting trees for several hours before figuring out how to outsmart a possum. Either way, whatever the hell it was left me alone and I slept peacefully through the rest of the night.


My mental alarm clock held true and I was up by dawn, albeit a bit haggard, and as I was packing up a light rain began to fall. I hustled back down to the ranger station at Totaranui in time to see the heavens open. I had thought about trying to hitch a ride with some campers leaving the park, or perhaps even try to walk the 20km out, but the prospect of standing in the rain was less than appealing, and I bought myself a bus ticket to Takaka.