Nelson is a big town by South Island standards, but still
only has about 4 main streets. Our goal upon
arrival was to find the best 3-5 days in the last 10 before I had to go back up
to the North Island to do the coastal track. The first step to this was to check the
weather. Checking the weather in NZ is a
difficult task that frequently involves much guesswork. The forecast usually changes every few hours,
with drastic changes about every 6. They
are pretty much only accurate when they are telling you what the weather is at
that moment outside, and even then they can be wrong sometimes. But anyway, when checked the weather before
we got there on Friday we thought it was meant to clear up about Tuesday so we
would have the weekend to plan things out.
But surprise surprise the forecast changed so that the nice days would
be Saturday through Tuesday. “Well, I
guess we should leave tomorrow then, and be done before the rain sets in.” So we went to the information site to plan our
track. The coastal track is tricky to
plan due to tidal crossings, which can only be achieved within certain hours of
low tide, unless you want to walk an extra few kms to get around the beach. But a) we didn’t want to add extra walking,
and b) who would want to miss backpacking on the beach? We carefully planned our trip and went ahead
and booked campsites for each night, spreading out the walking fairly evenly
over the 4 days. It wasn’t until after
that was booked that we gave any serious thought to how we would get back to
our car after walking away from it for 4 days straight. We learned that there was a bus that went
back down a few times a day, or water taxis that went periodically, were very
scenic, and shaved about an hour off the return time, so that seemed like the
best option. The only issue was that the
water taxis only stopped a certain ways up the trail, and not that close to the
end of it. But we eye-balled it and
thought we could make it to the end and back to the water taxi site by 3pm on
our last day… we figured we would just sort out the details later. A few pics from walking:
The first day we estimated we walked about 17 kms. This is only an estimate for two
reasons. One, the maps we used had
distances between certain points, but not to and from each point or even each campsite, and some
of the campsites we stayed at were between the measurement points. Two, the signs along the trail indicating
distances between points are inconsistent. For example, one might say you’ve been 4 kms and have 12 to go (total of 16 kms btn
points), and the next will tell you you’ve been 6 kms and have 11 to go (total
of 17kms… where did the extra km come from?!)
Either way, it was a lot of walking, especially the second day (I think
about 20 kms), and after that my toes were pretty blistered and required much mole skin, held on by duct tape of course:
But we kept on, had a shorter 3rd day due to a
tidal crossing at noon that was right by our campsite, and then shortened the
last day to save my toes and Tres’ heels, and to get to our water taxi on
time. The water taxi turned out to be a
great decision because we had a very nice driver who acted as a tour guide and
told us interesting things about each of the stops and some places in
between. We also saw a little blue
penguin swimming around right next to the boat on our way in! Also it started raining on our way back so seems like we did alright on timing our tramp. After 4 days on trail
we looked about the same as when we set off, but luckily photos do not exhibit
smells…
And on our way back to town we came across this and couldn't resist:
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