#17: Able Tasman National Park, Motueka, New Zealand
Tropical scenes, top-tier ice creams, and the best beer you're like to find.
Golden sand, green sea, towering tree ferns—you might think you’re in Hawaii, or Brazil. That’s the cool thing about Abel Tasman National Park—it doesn’t seem real (sort of a theme in NZ). I mean, look at this water—what?
It’s not exactly warm, to be fair, but locals swim all the time (as we did) and the bays are a hotbed of watersports. This isn’t a pristine, end of the earth kind of National Park, and rather more like a holiday destination with stringent protections and high investment. It’s home to a Great Walk (which I had done on my previous visit), a few small towns, and a robust water taxi circuit that lets tourists get deeper into the park without the long (multi-day) hike.
Rewind: We’re driving over the mountains from the West Coast, winding through pine forests and fields of hops (whose names you may recognize from your local craft beer case—motueka, nelson sauvin, riwaka). First you hit the town of Motueka, which is absolutely charming—it boasts a rusting shipwreck and ocean pool like you see in Australia.
The next town up the road, Riwaka, hosts Hop Federation, in the running for my favorite beer on the planet, and the Thomas Brothers Cherry and Real Fruit Ice Cream Stall—the soft serve here must be seen to be believed. I mean tasted! When they say real fruit, they mean it.
Our rental was in Mārahau, right at the entrance to the park. For our big day out, we chose to take a water taxi halfway in to walk a particularly beautiful stretch of track. The taxi is also a nature cruise, and is a big part of the experience (lots of people kayak, too). It’s not easy hiking, with lots of up and down, but it’s not particularly strenuous and we were proud of my dad for keeping up for a long distance. Most of the track winds atop the shoreline hillsides lined with tree ferns and scrub pines. The bushes are alive with birdsong, especially the ever present—but never unwelcome—Tui. Every few miles, the track touches the see, and its wilderness beaches are stunning, thick grained and gold.
On my last trip, I camped at three different beaches (over Christmas!) This time, though I missed waking up to the dawn, I was glad to share the experience with family, and more than fine chilling in our rental sipping Hop Federation (Fields of Green IPA and Brut Pilsner) and hate-watching “The Family Stone,” truly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, and in drastic need of being forgotten permanently.
Eventually we moved a few towns over, across the bay, to Nelson, a top retiree destination on the fringes of the Marlborough region, where we continued chilling with the occasional stroll. During one, we met one of our favorite cats of the year, “the jester,” who hiked for over an hour with us on a strenuous trail, all the way to the top and back down. Good cat.
This stretch of the trip was filled with small pleasures—watching expert-level kite surfers hit the low tide shallows, visiting countryside restaurants brimming with summer energy, trying our hand at cooking with local ingredients, including fresh flounder (first time…it came out well!). You know we went back for a second cherry ice cream (or was it a third?)
And it was filled with deep conversations about how we want to approach the future. You can’t just jump into these. The thoughts and perspectives need time to breathe and percolate. There’s no better foundation for going deep than having fun in nature together, day after day. That time is the key to unlocking that layers of trust that it takes to build a long term partnership.
Next week → Tongariro Alpine Crossing, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand