The Abel Tasman Coastal Track is one of New Zealand’s Great Walks. Normally, it’s a tramp of about three days. But because that wasn’t enough for me, I made a six day tramp out of it, following the Inland Track back. Or maybe I was just too cheap to pay the water taxi, which normally picks you up at the end of the track, to bring you back to the car park…

At the time, I had been in Nelson just a few days, and was thinking about searching for some payed work, to fill up the (Spoiler alert! I didn’t work, just wwoofed at the hostel, I was staying at). The weather has been quite bad the last week or two and I wasn’t expecting to do any tramping any time soon. But then the weather forecast predicted a good weather window for the next seven days. So I took my chances and trusted in the weather forecast to be right for a whole week (Normally, it’s not right for just two or three days in advance).

After a quick trip to the DOC in Nelson, just to make sure, it is still a good idea, to do this tramp in winter and booking the huts along the Great Walk online, I set out to the supermarket to buy provisions. On my previous trips, I basically always had some porridge with dried fruit (raisins and apricots) and milk powder for breakfast, an apple or a pear with crackers and cheese and muesli bars or the occasional peanut butter & jam sandwich for lunch and lastly rice with canned tuna in some kind of sauce for dinner. This has been working quite well so far and I just scaled that up from two days to six. In hindsight, if you don’t mind the rather bleak dinner, compared to what others take, I still think it is a reasonable choice. Only the apples and pear (remember six in total) I’d leave at home the next time. As nice as some fresh fruit might be, they are quite heavy, as they contain quite a lot of water. And water is your enemy, when you have to carry it. There are a lot of people, who buy these complete freeze dried meals. And they are quite good and especially nutritious, but with about 10 NZD a piece, they are also quite fucking expensive… Compare that to a can of tuna, which is only a dollar a piece… Tuna, ‘t is!

(Hoping to be) Fully equipped I set out the next day at around 9 o’clock, I think, to drive the one and a half hours to Marahau, where the Great Walk starts. The backpack felt surprisingly light. I would have expected it to weight far more heavy on my shoulders. Maybe it really wasn’t so heavy, as I dialed down on the spare clothes I had compared to previous times, or maybe I was just in a good mood. 🙂

Maybe I’ll be able to finish this another time, but not right now. So here are the pictures I wanted to show you from this trip.