- Travel
Not all Great Walks are about reaching the highest peaks – one of New Zealand’s standout trails is the 37-mile Abel Tasman Coast Track, with its easy paths that always lead back to coastal viewpoints and beaches for a refreshing swim.
Published January 15, 2024
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
With its massive buttress roots and leathery green leaves, the northern rātā tree is a force to be reckoned with. Dropped by the wind, its seeds land in the canopies of neighboring trees, germinating and then over hundreds of years wrapping around its host, eventually engulfing it and devouring the decaying trunk. ‘It operates on a totally different timescale to humans,’ says guide and outdoor educator, Rod Morrison, as we stand at the base of what he estimates to be a 1,000-year-old rātā. ‘Other guides might be into mushrooms or birds, but I love symbiosis: how different species relate to each other.’
‘We’re only a few hours into our hike through Abel Tasman National Park, a sheltered paradise found at the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island and one of the country’s smallest national parks. Over the next three days, I’ll be hiking along the 37-mile Abel Tasman Coast Track, gazing out from this sea-skirting Great Walk for dusky dolphins, fur seals, little blue penguins, and wekas – a ground-dwelling bird infamous for raiding camp tents in search of snacks.’
Already we’ve navigated tannin-hued marshlands, deep tunnels of rainforest, and beaches speckled with tide-battered boulders. Rod is a guide with Wilsons Abel Tasman, a family-owned water taxi and tour operator with roots in the park as deep as its trees’. He’s given me a quick introduction to the reserve’s flora – teaching me how to eat the tender shoots of hardy supplejack vines, which plants can read my future, and which can cure an upset stomach when boiled into a tea.
The pace is easy-going. Together, we enter lofty forests where trees wear tutus of branching kiēkī palms, then climb a series of moderately steep bends. While the coastal track is well signposted and would be simple to follow if I were hiking on my own, I’d find the tidal estuary crossings rather daunting. Timing is key: walk too fast or too slow, and you risk being blocked by the rising tide and forced to detour for hours through the mountains. Thankfully, Rod has been tramping these trails since he was a young lad and is intimately familiar with the park’s watery rhythms.
It helps that he has some contingencies up his sleeve, too. We arrive at our first tidal crossing to discover a swollen inlet has made our passage impossible, but Rod has called ahead and a barge is waiting for us. We peel off our socks and shoes to wade out to the vessel in chilly, knee-deep waters and are ferried to the historic Meadowbank Homestead,