When was the last time you spent four days carrying around 50 kilos on your back, camped under the stars and hiked 51 kilometers? Not recently? Well, for us it was less than a week ago.
New Zealand has multi-day tramping tracks throughout the country that run through their national parks. We thought it would be a good experience to try one out, so we opted for Abel Tasman (a dutch explorer) National Park on the northern tip of the South Island. This four day adventure took us up the coast, with most of the track along the beach. Now, don't get us wrong, you can see from the pics that we saw some of the most beautiful, pristine, untouched, hidden beaches and bays in the world. But after four days of tuna fish, burning hot sun and blisters, and bugs that would give Assateague Island a run for its money, it's a wonder Gen and I are still talking to each other!! I did mention no showers and tuna fish three meals a day, didn't I?
It was tough. Tough like swimming from Australia to New Zealand. There were tears, there was blood, there was laughter, there was shouting, there wasn't a single shower and there was a lot of tuna fish...did I mention that yet? I think at some point Gen actually called off the engagement, also. But we did it! It took us four days, we crossed four estuaries at low tide, and one at high tide (big mistake!), tramped 51 km...and ate tuna...and didn't shower.
The biggest bugger of all though, was that the day before we were supposed to do this huge camping trip, we realized that someone had stolen our tent...oye! And after four days of fun, the bus ride back to camp was a thrilling adventure around 365 turns that are all on a mountain overlooking the valley!
this was us at the end of the trip...
