The North-West of the South Island

My stay at Nelson Lakes was quickly followed by a jet over to Abel Tasman National Park. This is New Zealand's smallest, but one of the most popular, national parks. It's known for incredible beaches, and some of the most dramatic tide changes in the country. In some areas, high and low tide has a difference of 14 meters. The Abel Tasman Great Walk track is a completely different hike if you're able to complete it on low tide! I decided to book a little water taxi that would shuttle me out to part of the track, and let me see some good beaches as well.

Something I've enjoyed about solo-traveling is being the inevitable extra character in random people's experiences (and vice versa). Moments of vulnerability are so quick to appear in new places, among unfamiliar things. It's like the Canadian woman clutching my arm in the pure dark of the glow worm caves, or the marine engineer who I would talk to about boat construction for several sunset hours, because we happened to be camping next to each other. On this boat ride, its was the elderly German man unabashedly yelling 'Shite!' every time the boat hit a large swell, while his wife cackled and beamed at me. These interactions shake me from the existential ponderings I'm sometimes prone too when alone. Observing, and participating with people in these strange moments of play and joy is very unique. After some time, I couldn't help myself from laughing out loud along with the wife.

Our boat dumped us at Bark Bay, with a scheduled pickup later down the track in four hours. I took another look at the trail, and realized I actually needed to cover 8 miles in those four hours, in addition to scarfing down my lunch and enjoying the little scenic offshoots along the way.

In retrospect this was a very long 8 miles to commit to my Chacos. I can now confidently say I've broken them in. They might've broken me a little as well. I did my best to make good time hiking south, but was endlessly distracted along the jungle trail. There were lush greens in every color imaginable, and I needed to photography them all. There were 12 foot high fern trees, covering me overhead like God's great umbrellas. Endless freshwater streams ran down the mountain to my right, into the beach. Every once in a while, a glimpse through the foliage brough another view of the impossibly golden sands wrapped around the park. My trek across one of the beaches was brough to a complete halt over an incredible collection of seashells.

I have a very distinct memory of wanting to hunt for seashells on a trip to the Cayman Islands as a kid. My mom, of course, dutifully roused me at sunrise so we could commence our scavenging. At 12, I was absolutely appalled to walk outside and not find the ocean's greatest treasures just strewn at my feet. How ridiculous. On the south island, I started to see seashells as I imagined them back then. Small, but there were shells of yellows and blues and greens. Fully formed sea scallops, and bay scallops, and widow's cookies. I did take a teeny tiny one for my shell collection (and for 12 year old me), I left the best of them where they belonged.

I managed to make the hike with a few stops, and 30 minutes to spare. A good thing, because it was a bit of a haul to Wharariki Beach for the night (thank you to Spencer and Haley for the rec). The drive was long and impossibly beautiful, and this ended up being one of my favorite campsites for the trip. My site was so quiet, and since it was farther from the beach, I had a reprieve from the sandflies. The pouring rain put me right to sleep that night.

In the morning, I walked down to Wharariki. There had been a couple signs about potential seals, I was so surprised to see a whole group on them lounging on the beach! I about cried from the shock of watching the pups lumber out from being their rocks. They launched themselves all over the small pools on the beach, rocketing themselves through natural slides and clambering all over each other. Everyone kept a healthy distance, but they were curious about us visitors as well. Several times a small head would peek around the corner or out of the water just to check us all out in their sly, peek-a-boo kind of way. The picture with the post may not look like much, but you'll spot a few seals if you look close!

"Play was evolution's way of building brains, and any creature with a brain as developed as a giant oceanic mantra sure used it. If you want to make something smarter, teach it the play." - Playground, pg 59