The Abel Tasman Coastal Track is called one of New Zealand’s Great Walks. The total trail is 60km & takes 3-5 days from Marahau to Totaranui with tent camping spots and a few sleeping huts along the way. We have decided to only do a day hike. We tramped almost 13km from Marahau to Anchorage…

We left Westport this morning heading north on another series of long curvy roads. We drove in and out (and back in and back out) of the rain all day. Now that we are out of the forest, we are driving through large agricultural areas. There are tons of sheep, of course, but also huge…

We shouldn’t be surprised to have lousy weather in an area known for its lousy weather. Cape Foulwind is a prominent headland overlooking the Tasman Sea. It was named by Captain James Cook in 1770 after his ship was blown off course by nasty westerly winds. The Cape Foulwind walkway is a small section of…

We left Hokitika this morning and followed the coast north. There were lots of places to stop and take photos. First we travelled off the beaten path and back in time to the Woods Creek Track for a history lesson of gold mining in the area. The short path took us along the creek, through…

A few days ago, we found the bridges over the Blue Holes closed for upgrades, so today we hiked to the Hokitika River Gorge for a similar view. The only part of the hike that was not great was finding more &^%$# sandflies that feasted on the parts of us not covered in bug spray…

Today we did several short hikes around Ruatapu just south of Hokitika. The Mananui Bush Walk took us through more beautiful forest and out to some cool sand dunes beside the ocean. The Jum Michel Track ended at pretty Lake Mahinapua, home to a flock of rare white herons In the parking lot we found…

Alas, we woke up to rain this morning. Hokitika isn’t too far to drive, so we had planned to stop at a few view points and do some short hikes on the way. With low cloud at the scenic stops and periods of tropical rain we ultimately decided those would be no fun. We made…

This morning we woke to low cloud cover, so gave up the idea of seeing the glacier again. We were supposed to visit Fox Glacier today, so we’re glad we moved it to yesterday. We saved the lower elevation hikes and activities for today. We headed out on the Tatare Tunnels Walk, starting along an…

In Franz Josef, we are tucked up against the mountains but also close to the ocean, so weather tends to be quite variable depending on the time of day. We are finding mornings to be mostly clear with clouds rolling in by early afternoon. We got up early this morning and made the drive to…

The noise from helicopter tours is incessant in this town. The Thing to do is heli-hike on the glacier so there are helicopters flying around all day. It is ridiculously expensive for a very short amount of time. And since we have already done a glacier hike in Argentina, we are less than enthusiastic. Instead,…