Scenes from Abel Tasman National Park
It’s so easy your grandmother could do it, the guy at the Motueka Top 10 told me when I inquired about the most popular hike in Abel Tasman National Park. While a couple of lazy non-hikers like Sean and me managed the 5.4 mile hike from Bark Bay to Anchorage Bay without any troubles (save for a few grumbles along the lines of hills? no one told me there was going to hills!), I’m not sure I can picture my grandmother trucking along the trail (may she rest in peace). Perhaps his statement should have been qualified that it was so easy a New Zealand grandmother could do it, judging by the sweet 90-something couple we chatted with on a hiking trail in Arrowtown. But what do I know? We passed the 90 year olds in Arrowtown, but a 4-year-old girl kept smoking us on the trail at Abel Tasman.
Abel Tasman National Park, located on the South Island’s northeast coast, is New Zealand’s smallest national park but it is packed to the gills with beautiful unblemished coastline. There are no roads inside the park, so we took a water taxi along the coast to get to our hiking destination and were blessed with one of our few sunny days in New Zealand.
