Wednesday 7 October 2026
Abel Tasman 2026
Last week, on the Monday after the Friday I resigned from Google, I flew down to Nelson and spend the next four days walking the Abel Tasman Coast Track Great Walk for the second time (third if you count the kayaking variant).
It’s eleven years since that first trip and my tramping group has completely changed. My children and father came with me back then, and now my father is too old and my children are also too old, in that they have their own lives and were too busy to come this time. Now I have friends whose own children are getting to the age where tramping is possible — five to ten years old — so I had the privilege of leading them on this trip to enjoy the wonders of God’s creation, the joy of a good walk, and the pleasure of good company off the grid.
Unfortunately one of the children was sick leading up to the trip, so that family skipped the first two days and caught up to us (with the help of a water-taxi) towards the end of the third day). One of the adults who had planned to come was also sick and had to skip the whole thing. Altogether we started with three children and seven adults and ended with five children and eight adults.
Apart from that, everything went extraordinarily well. The weather was perfect — sunny, but with the cool of early spring. It’s a great time of year to walk the Abel Tasman, with the one disadvantage being that the sea is extremely cold for swimming. There were no mishaps apart from some wet feet crossing estuaries at low tide … basically unavoidable unless you take the long way around, which is less fun and takes away from relaxing hut time. The food was good, the children were happy, and even on the long-ish last day (more than seven hours of walking) we had no significant drama. It seems that most children can walk for a long time if you keep feeding them snacks very frequently.
We did the usual four-day itinerary, staying at Anchorage, Bark Bay and Awaroa Huts. In previous trips we had dinner on the last night at Awaroa Lodge, but that wasn’t an option this year because it wasn’t open until October 1. We brought real food for all three nights because I’ve never found a dehydrated meal option that was genuinely good food (well, maybe I’ve found one … see the next blog post). I made a lot of dehydrated fruit and beef jerky in the run-up to the trip and that was all very popular.
We spent a fair amount of hut time playing Bang!, but the children also spent a lot of time outside just playing on the shore, which was a delight to see. Adults took some time to do side trips from the huts, like exploring the estuaries and beaches at Awaroa and Bark Bay and the tiny cove of Medlands.
As usual we saw a lot of wekas — such charismatic birds. On a few beaches we saw what I’m pretty sure were the tracks of little blue penguins, which I don’t remember seeing on my previous Abel Tasman walks. They consistently came straight up out of the water to the bushline, unlike other bird tracks I’ve ever seen, and the markings look like what you’d imagine flippers would leave. One one beach, we saw what seemed to be whitebait washed up in significant numbers, which makes sense since it’s whitebait season and we saw a lot of whitebait netters on the drive from Nelson to Maharau.
