Making New Friends

Abel Tasman Coastal Track, Bark Bay to Marahau
17 – 20 April 2019
Party: Mark, Spike, Me
 
A few weeks prior to departure, I got the devastating email from Lisa that her boss wasn’t allowing her leave to bring her two boys up and walk with us. Given the short notice, we weren’t able to find anyone to take her place either, leaving us a little anxious that Spike would be hard work with no other kids to walk with.

Obviously, we still went anyway.

Our ferry sailing and drive through to Motueka both went smoothly. The Motueka Top10 has changed a bit since Mark and I were last there (in about the summer of 2011), but not massively so. The large, park-like gardens were basically empty, opening up masses of space to run around in on our day off.

When we arrived at our water taxi depot in Marahau on the Wednesday morning, we discovered that they actually did offer gear portage – but we had packed in such a way that this wasn’t feasible for us to arrange with super short notice. Looking later at their website, to figure out how we had missed this essential piece of planning information, we could not find a single reference to it. It seems that if you don’t pick up one of their printed brochures while doing your planning, you’ll never know.

The ride out to Bark Bay was somewhat bumpy, but not massively so. We arrived as the tide was well into its drop to low tide, so had to be dropped at the far end of the beach, leading to about 10 minutes of slog through the soft, grainy sand, to the hut itself. Wandering inside, we found we were among the first to arrive for the night, so nabbed a trio of mattresses before enjoying lunch on the deck.

To fill in our afternoon, we went for a walk to a swing bridge and waterfall, and explored the estuary.
After a scrummy dinner (eaten under the watchful eye of a couple of weka), Spike had an early-ish night, and Mark and I got to know some of the others in the hut with us. There were a lot of kiwis in residence, which was lovely.

Thursday dawned fine, and after watching some of the others having a swim in the estuary, we headed off, allowing ourselves as much time as possible for our 8.5km day. We opted to stop and explore Sandfly Bay on our way through, and took our time heading up the hill from the swingbridge just past there.

We timed things nicely, arriving in Torrent Bay about half an hour before full low tide. We sat by the wharf and ate a relaxed lunch before making our way across the estuary. The last up and over the hill to Anchorage was easier than I remembered, and we were among the first 10 or so people to arrive at Anchorage Hut for the night, getting awesome bunks.

Another relaxing afternoon stretched before us. We watched guided walkers wander in and out, and a group of canyoners do the same. The hut filled up, and the lights came on as the sunset dropped.

Watching everyone leave on Friday, knowing we had a full day up our sleeves to do whatever we wanted was an unusual sensation. But the peace at the hut between departure time and the arrival of the first day walkers was gorgeous. We wound up doing two walks – in the morning out to Pitt Head (don’t bother, the views aren’t that amazing), and in the afternoon out to Cleopatras Pool, via the high tide track there, and the estuary back.

The climb out of Anchorage on Saturday morning was unrelenting. We were glad to have made a reasonably early start as it was exposed and very warm on our way up the hill. The going was super slow (not helped by how much walking we had inadvertently done on our “day off”). Spike super hit the wall all day, and it was just hard going.

We stopped at several of the bays along the way for toilets and rest, enjoying being watched by weka. Thankfully this day had regularly spaced markers for trapping boxes that counted down to the end of the track at Marahau – finding these was all that kept Spike putting one foot in front of the other. To be honest, by the end of the day, I felt about the same.

The last couple of km from Tinline Bay campsite to the Marahau road end were just depressing. We should have dropped out on to the beach and taken the low-tide route, but we weren’t confident of it. Instead we ducked and weaved, climbed and dropped, never seemed to get any closer till we were on the bridges.
 

We grabbed our car, changed into more comfortable shoes, and headed off back to Kaiteriteri, where we were staying for the night. Hot showers, clean clothes, dinner cooked for us, and real beds. Exactly what was needed to wrap up this trip. We were super proud of how Spike had done over our four days on the track. We’re keen at some point to go back as a family and walk the northern end of the track – Bark Bay to Whariwharangi Hut, but that’s maybe a few years away yet.