All the surprises I found walking the Abel Tasman Coast Track
Beautiful blues, yummy yellows and huts with WiFi!
Right, let’s get this said: the Great Walks are, well, a bit tame in my eyes. That’s not to say they are lame. They’re obviously situated in some beautiful locations around these islands, places people want to get to and get to easily. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just I like to visit some of the world’s more difficult to get to places.
Despite this, the Great Walks have got to be done. They just must. This is even more true if you have a girlfriend on a limited visa in Aotearoa. The clock is ticking and Zoe wants to see all the things. That’s what makes the Great Walks great. They are a quick ticket to witnessing some of NZ’s raw, natural beauty.
Unlike some of our other joint adventures, they also offer better odds of remaining friends at the end. Try smashing through the Aorangi Range with an inter-island ferry to catch (wait for the book!). If you make it through that, try visiting the summits of Mount Arthur and Gordons Pyramid, before heading down to Salisbury Lodge all in one day (there's a post on that coming!). So, we (me begrudgingly) booked a nice, leisurely five days on the famed Abel Tasman Coast Track. It would be okay, right?
In fact, it was more than okay. It was also full of surprises.
Surprise number 1 - booking
The Great Walks are all “sold out”, are they? They all booked up in minutes on booking release day, right? It’s not uncommon to find plenty of tent sites available long after that dreadful mad-dash day. When the Great Walks are said to be “sold out”, they mean bunks in huts. This means, if camping is an option for the Great Walk you want, you will probably find some spaces. However, the same can sometimes be true of the huts, too! Fully booked they may have been, but people’s plans change and cancellations occur.
Last April, I booked a hut on the Northern Circuit on the morning of my stay. On a Friday, no less! For Abel Tasman, we booked a string of four hut stays, for two people, just over three weeks out from our walk dates! Don’t take the “sold out” sign at face value. Check!
Surprise number 2 - the huts
For some reason, the water taxis don’t run to the northern start (end, for some) of the Great Walk. Wainui car park is accessible only on foot or by road. After getting dropped at Tōtaranui, we took the inland track over Gibbs Hill and dropped down to Whariwharangi Hut, where a complete surprise awaited: the hut itself!
Whariwharangi is an old homestead in a neat, grassy clearing, complete - according to the ranger on duty - with original matai floor. It has multiple upstairs rooms and the jewel in the crown for the first pair to arrive: a twin room downstairs! That’s right, you can have your very own room if you get there early enough. Which we did.
Despite all its character and charm, Whariwharangi doesn’t come with WiFi internet, which - wait for it - makes it an outlier on the Abel Tasman Coast Track. You read it right: all the other huts had WiFi1. Courtesy of a private restoration trust called Project Janszoon, hut stayers could log on and get their Wordle fix, wind up Chat GPT or even use it sensibly, like for checking the next day’s weather. An unexpected bonus in some ways, I feel it changed the vibe and that get-along nature of staying in a hut with strangers. As we crossed the estuary to Awaroa Hut, scores of trampers were sprawled out on the lawn, many of them glued to their phones.
Bark Bay (not as dog shit as it sounds) was our home on the third night, before we capped off our journey at Anchorage Hut - possibly the jewel in the DOC hut crown. A giant window fills its supersized kitchen with a glorious view of the bay. Out the kitchen door, a long wooden deck provides access to four individual bunk rooms. Three sleep eight, the end one sleeps ten. Flush toilets are also found adjoining the building2. This beachfront property felt more like a flash lodge than a hut by DOC. And then I found the USB charging point in the kitchen!
Despite all these mod-cons, there’s still nothing to save you from the snorers. This age-old hut problem persists, albeit with the bonus you can escape to the kitchen and play on the WiFi if necessary. 4 hut sleep hours = 1 home sleep hour.
Surprise number 3 - the scenes
Anyone who’s been or seen pictures online knows that Abel Tasman National Park is très stunno. The golden beaches are next level; the ocean scenes are jaw-dropping; and they really are that good in real life!
I admit I was nonchalant about this walk in the run-up. I was convinced the track wouldn’t challenge me and the beaches would be frustrating as we wouldn’t be stopping to enjoy them. Even our a five day experience required making the low tide crossings at the right time, or risk getting stuck for a few hours. Beautiful beaches aren’t my ideal hiking destinations. Sand gets in your shoes and you want to be swimming not slogging your way down them. Still, here’s what I learnt: it doesn’t matter if you are somewhere for five minutes, five hours or five days; if it makes you say “wow” out loud, that’s enough.
You get swept up in the constant scenes, like a film reel being rolled across your eyes. Even the “view-starved” rainforest sections are lush. Birds confidently yell out their songs in all directions; a sneaky wetland pokes its glimmering reflections through the trees. Definitely consider a holiday in these parts if that’s more your thing, but hiking through is still super fun. Plus, the photos and memories should last forever, right?
Surprise number 4 - Torrent Bay
This walk never felt like a wander in the wilderness. Unlike Heaphy, Paparoa and Northern Circuit, where you spend hours in the mountains, here we walked with the constant whirring of boats dropping off and picking up others. Every beach we visited had something going on. And then we arrived at Torrent Bay Village!
Before the formation of the National Park in 1942, many people had already bought sections and built bachs on them. Torrent Bay is the largest cluster of these holiday homes. Looking down from the viewpoint, high above the Rākauroa Beach, it’s immediately obvious your Great Walk is about to pass through a small settlement. Two roads made of sand lead the way between the properties, convincing you you’ve been magically whisked off to a Pacific Island. Wilmot Pass Road, which serves Fiordland’s Doubtful Sound, is credited as being the only NZ mainland road disconnected from the rest of the roading network. However, in “Lagoon Street” and “Mānuka Street”, I say we have two more.
Surprise number 5 - tidal crossings
Among all that world-leading natural beauty and happily singing native birds, are a number of tidal crossings. Some are optional, some have wide windows for getting across, while one - Awaroa Inlet - is essential and has a narrower window for getting across. They all share one thing in common, though: they’re all way more fun than they should be!
Grey mud, with a layer of super-yellow sand dumped on top, mixed with some sharp shellfish pieces to cut you open, shouldn’t be a fun section of the walk, but everyone loves a shortcut, right?
People gather at the shores, sometimes too early, and await their appointment with the moon to cross the vastly reduced river. The clock strikes “go” and adult groups, lone trampers and families with kids all set off. There’s the barefoot-all-the-way people and there’s those who try to get across without removing their shoes. Despite the obvious differences in approach, there's a subconscious camaraderie between crossers. All are willing each other along to get across safely and efficiently - “just don’t steal our bunk in the hut!”
Admittedly, I didn’t look for WiFi at Whariwharangi, so this could be totally false! I was enjoying being off-grid too much and cell service at the beach was only 300 metres down the track.
Unfortunately, these were stainless steel and not the nice porcelain ones found elsewhere along the track.