One box of cracker and another crazy pass through the mountains later, we were almost back at the west coast. In fact only around 100km beeline apart of the Oparara Bassin, at the west of the north coast of the south island (sorry, I couldn’t resist putting 3 cardinal direction in one sentence 🙂 ), called Golden Bay.
The major highlights are the Wharariki Beach and the Farewell Spit. After a short walk through green hills (which could have been Hobbiton, but weren’t), it took our breath away. An unbelievable, long, wide, beautiful, golden, idyllic AND ALMOST UNPEOPLED beach with planted sandstone rocks on or slightly off-shore. This rocks have pools where seal puppies play and caves you can walk through. A picture tells more than words, so have a look at them. Farewell Spit is a long straight sandy peninsula which marks the western border of Golden Bay. It’s possible to walk on a part of it, what we did for sure, meaning that one walks in wetland at the east side of it. On the other side (only 20 minutes by foot away) you’ll walk back along an endless beach, which just disappears in the horizon. Just breathe taking.
We were already completely happy with the journey, but it should stay as spectacular! We drove to Totaranui in the late afternoon, which is kind of the centre of Abel Tasman, where we wanted to camp. There we saw maybe the most stunning sunset we’ve seen so far. Even though we were in the east, and therefore couldn’t see the actual sunset, the sun produced a red colour directly over the sea crowned by the extreme bright full moon. This together ended up in a crazy colour scheme, from the red golden beach over the dark sea, dark blue horizon with a violet transition to orange clouds, light blue sky and snow white moon. The camera wasn’t able to mirror all these colours but we hope you can guess it.
The next day we walked a part of the coastal track until Separation Point. We got a good impression of the Great Walk, it gets up and down during native forest interrupted by walks along the beach. Just extremely multifaceted. Furthermore, we finally saw a whale! Even a BABY!!! Unfortunately dead and squirmy smelling at the beach :-(((( After around five hours of walking we were back at the car and had a look on the Awaroa Inlet which is infamous for its extreme tides. This part of the coastal track can only be passed 1.5 hours before and 2 hours after low tide. Principally it’s a huge bay, which completely fills up with water during high tide.
In the evening we drove to Waikoropupu Springs, which are proven to have one of the clearest spring waters worldwide. You can see the ground of the lake over a couple of meters crystal clear. The picture can only provide a dim print, but we hope you can imagine it! Afterwards we drove on a DOC campsite again which was on the top of the mountains in the middle of the pass we crossed the other day. The next day we walked from there to the deepest earth hole (Hardwoods Hole) of New Zealand which is 176m deep. Besides that, we slept at the point where the scenes with the wargs (the huge wolf like creatures) were shot. Because we were quite high over the sea level, the night was extremely cold and we got in contact with two Australians who had a funny premier the next day. They saw frost for their first time 🙂
Well, after we adored the earth hole we drove to the southern part of Abel Tasman to accomplish another part of the track. In fact it’s quite similar to the northern part, but wider and with some islands offshore which make it look a bit like the Whitsundays in Australia. Beautiful red golden beaches with turquoise water! We were even able to experience the tides! During our way back to the car we walked along a bay, which wasn’t crossable when we came in the morning and we had to walk over bridges then. Now it was completely out of water and we had a lot of fun in the mudflats 🙂 No wonder that the track is so famous and it will definitely get a spot on the todo-list for the next visit of New Zealand, then hopefully with better weather!
However, our estimation about the bad weather got approved. If there were just some clouds (mainly the first day) above the sun or even a bit of rain, the track lost 80% of its beauty! That’s why we were quite happy that we did the shorter trip with nice weather instead of the 4 day walking track. Afterwards we drove back to Sue to visit the remaining parts of Nelson…