Abel Tasman

My study abroad program hosts a few fun excursions throughout the trimester. The biggest and only overnight adventure was two weekends ago (Mar 17th to 19th) and they took us to Abel Tasman National Park!

This trip was just for Wellington students unlike orientation when we were with Auckland students too and a couple people didn’t go so we ended up with a small group of eight students. We all met up near my flat and took a taxi to the Inter-islander ferry. The ferry is a three hour ride and it crosses from Wellington (bottom of North Island) to Picton (top of South Island). It was a pretty fancy ferry and had food and even a movie theater on board!

I bought Fish and Chips for dinner and we looked out at the South Island as we got close. We also played a phone game called Photo Roulette where the app shows a picture from someone’s camera roll and everyone has to guess whose camera roll it came from. It was interesting to watch us improve over time. I felt like we were a part of one of the machine learning algorithms I’ve been learning about where after processing a lot of information, a computer can make a pretty good guess at how to classify a new image.

There were some troubles recently with the Inter-islander ferries so we actually got a later ship than we had hoped for so we arrived pretty late. In Picton, we all met up with Jane, our program’s leader, and she drove us for about three hours to our backpackers accommodation near the national park. There were two people in our group I hadn’t actually met before because they got here late due the cyclone. It turns out that one of them actually lives in Concord, small world!

We all got ready for bed. It was pretty late! This is what one half of the room looked like. I was only sharing it with two others so we had a nice amount of space.

Saturday morning we all rose bright and early and went to the backpacker’s kitchen area where Jane had spread out some breakfast and lunch fixings. We all made our sandwiches and headed out for a day of tramping! I also met a new flightless bird. They are called Wekas and they like to take things from people so you have to be on the lookout. But they mean well.

Abel Tasman is a very accessible national park because there are water taxis that can take you to different parts of the park so you can walk as much or as little as you’d like. We took the taxi to our starting location and arranged to get picked up that afternoon from a different part.

The walk was gorgeous. At lunch time, we stopped at a hut (these are common in NZ, they are little houses people can live in) to fill our waters and change into our togs (swim suites). We ate on the beach and went swimming! I had brought some Kiwi Berries so I shared them with the group.

After lunch, we progressed onwards. We went at quite a clip. We crossed a dried up part of the beach (low tide) as a short cut and I got my sneakers soaked (they are dry now, no worries!). We stopped again a bit farther along to eat some chocolate and then again at a waterfall where I went down a little rock slide! It was super fun! And amazingly, our group arrived back at the water taxi right on time!

It was a LONG walk! Around 12 miles and we were all exhausted. We headed back to the backpackers, got some ice cream from a little store the accommodation had and we played a bit of ping pong and badminton. It was then time for us to help Jane make dinner. My job was to mind the pasta and broccoli on the stove. It’s really nice that this place provides stoves, silverware, pots, plates, etc. It has everything!

We all ate dinner as a group and then we played a fun card game Jane teached us. It was called Animal Snap and we each had to pick an animal sound. Then if your card number matches another player’s card number, you have to say their sound before they say yours! My sound was “quack quack” in case you were curious. We ended up playing for at least an hour. Later on, I went out with some of the folks to look at the stars. It was just such a wholesome day. Honestly a highlight for me so far in New Zealand.

Sunday started early again. We made breakfasts. We made lunches. I packed up my bags. Today we returned to the water taxi place but this time to go kayaking instead of hiking. They drove us down to the beach and we got into our double kayaks.

It was about 8.5 miles of kayaking! These kayaks had rudders like the ones I used in Tasmania but on that outing, the dude I was with steered. This time, I got to try it! We all bumped into each other a lot but that’s to be expected. We stopped on a beach for lunch and a swim. Later, we kayaked near an island and saw some seals playing. They were so cute.

At the end, we had a few extra minutes so our guide had a couple of us switch kayaks mid water by forming a raft from all our kayaks. We headed back to shore, got back in the van, drove to Picton, got dinner, I tried to find a geocache (no success), and then we got back on the ferry, played some more photo roulette, relaxed and three hours later, arrived back in Wellington.

It was such a fun, unforgettable weekend. I remember being back at home deciding between NZ programs and looking at the excursions like some distant idea. Not so distant anymore!