Wellington and Abel Tasman

After 6 weeks of classes, the University of Canterbury has a 3 week “reading break”. During this time, students are supposed to work on their assignments and get caught up and prepared for the next term. If you’re an exchange student, those three weeks are a great opportunity to travel, and that’s what I did for the whole time.

On Friday, March 31, I took an early morning flight to Wellington. I went for a capoeira event that was happening there – there is a capoeira group in Wellington that is part of the same larger group as the one I’ve been training with here in Christchurch. Mestre Jogo de Dentro was supposed to come from Brazil to the event, but as he was about the board his flight, he found out his son was killed, and so was unable to come. The event was therefore much smaller than anticipated, but I still really enjoyed it.

I arrived in Wellington around 8am, and decided to go to the botanic gardens. There was a little cafe there, and I had a hot cross bun for breakfast, which is a classic Easter tradition here. Then I walked around the botanic gardens, which are beautiful. I saw lots of kākā (native parrots) and tūī (and even got pooped on).

After takeaway lunch from an Indian restaurant (which was delicious – New Zealand Indian food has impressed me every time), I went to the Museum of New Zealand: Te Papa Tongarewa. This was probably the best museum I have ever been to – the natural history exhibits were interesting and well put together, and the exhibits about the Māori and other pacific cultures were culturally sensitive and inspiring.

That evening, I met up with one of the capoeira teachers from the Wellington group (Yan), as well as the teacher from my group and another person from Auckland. We were all staying at Yan’s house, which was so kind of him. He has a wife and 6 month old son, and they were all really kind people.

The next morning, we had a capoeira workshop in town. It was cool to train with people I didn’t know so easily – the style is slightly different but more similar than the group in Santa Barbara, for example. After a quick lunch, we had a music workshop in the afternoon, and then a memorial roda for Mestre Jogo de Dentro’s son (a roda is where 8 people play music and sing, 2 people play capoeira, and the rest sits in a circle and sings; the people who are sitting switch out with those who are playing music and playing capoeira). That evening, people came over for dinner at Yan’s house, and I got to talk with some of the people – it was nice to get to know them more, because you don’t get to talk much when you’re training.

The next day, we had another movement workshop in the morning – I was pretty sore from the day before, so this workshop was quite difficult for me. After lunch, we had another music workshop and then another roda. Then the event was over! 2 short days, but so full of good moments.

That evening, Yan gave me a ride to the Belmont Regional Park Campground, where I set up my tent and had a very relaxing, quiet evening. I camped there by myself for 4 nights – it was a cheap, relaxing place to be, and I never felt unsafe there. The first night, I slept like 13 hours – much needed after the event.

The next day, I hiked into the regional park straight from the campsite. It was a relaxing hike with nice views, and I really enjoyed not talking to anybody at all that day.

The next day, I met up with a guy around my age from the capoeira event who was also from out of town, and we went to Zealandia, which is a large area near Wellington fenced off with a predator-proof fence. Because of this, it has amazing diversity and numbers of native birds – we saw kākā (parrots), takahē, saddlebacks, New Zealand robins, whiteheads, tūī, ruru (native owl), and tuatara. We also saw lots of mushrooms, and even took some to eat for dinner! The enclosure is big enough that we hiked for several hours, and could have done an even bigger loop had we wanted to.

The next day, I did another hike by myself along the skyline walkway, which had great views of Wellington and the surrounding area. It was a mix of trail and roads, and I saw cool trees, mushrooms, some sheep, and hundreds of rabbits. It was extremely windy on the unprotected parts of the ridge – the wind was so strong I could lean against it and not fall over.

Thursday was my travel day, and I was supposed to take the ferry from Wellington (North Island) to Picton (South Island) around 1pm. However, it kept getting delayed, and it finally left around 7pm. I spent the day in the city of Wellington, and also went to Victoria Park and saw a couple Lord of the Rings filming sites! When I finally got on the ferry, all I wanted to do was sleep. The ride took around 3.5 hours, and I arrived in Picton around 10:30 pm. I was able to walk to the my hostel from the dock – I was hoping to eat dinner in Picton and get to know people, but alas everyone in my room was already asleep when I got there, so I just unpacked quietly and went to sleep.

The next day was Good Friday, and everything was closed and it was raining, so I just hung out at the hostel until it was time to take the bus to Nelson. This was a 2 hour bus ride, and once there, I checked into my next hostel. Coincidentally, Anja was also staying there! She has been jumping around the South Island and woofing in various places, and it was good to catch up with her there between woofs! Fiona and Kate, my flatmates, met me at the hostel that evening, because the next day, we were starting the Abel Tasman Coast Track!

The Abel Tasman Coast Track (click to see track description) is one of the Great Walks of New Zealand. This means that lots of people do it, and the tracks are very well maintained. This was Fiona’s first time doing a backpacking trip longer than 1 night, so it was good that the Abel Tasman is also one of the easiest Great Walks, without much elevation gain – most of the track stays close to the ocean or is actually on the beach. The weather forecast for our trip was very bad; most weather services were saying it was going to be pouring rain 4 out of the 5 days we were on the track. New Zealand weather is notoriously difficult to predict, however, and while 2 of the nights were pretty rainy and there were 1 or 2 intense showers during the days, the rain was nowhere near continuous like the weather channel had threatened. We did have some intense thunderstorms though, which was quite exciting!

There were 4 of us on the hike: Fiona, Kate, myself, and another exchange student Kate and I both knew separately named Lucy. The first day, we took a bus from Nelson to the trailhead, packed up our stuff, and started hiking around 11. It was a beautiful day, and we arrived at the campsite (Anchorage) around 4pm. The campsites here are pretty luxurious, with treated water and flushing toilets and picnic tables. Some people take a water taxi to the campsite instead of hiking, so there were many boats on the water, and many people at the campsite.

Daylights savings time has ended here, which means that sunset is around 6pm and sunrise is around 6:30am. The next morning, we had to do a low tide crossing of a tidal estuary. There were 2 of these on this hike, so we had to time it well. Low tide was around 6:30, so we got up around 5:30, packed up our tents, and crossed the estuary. During high tide, the water in the estuary is above your head, but at low tide, you can walk across a big sandy/muddy expanse. There are a few streams that flow out to the ocean, so I did take off my boots, but the water never came higher than my knees. The hike that day was not too long, and since we got started so early, we got to our next campsite (Bark Bay) around 12pm. It was raining then, so we ate lunch in the shelter with all the other campers sheltering from the rain. In the afternoon we explored the beach. There is another tidal estuary here, and there were stingrays hunting fish as the tide went out!

That night it rained intensely and there was quite a thunderstorm, and we wondered if we would be able to continue our trip the next day. However, the next morning greeted us with plenty of sun! That night we were sleeping in a hut (Awaroa) instead of a tent, and so we had that to look forward to as we hiked that day.

On the 2nd to last day, we had another big tidal crossing, so we got up early again. It rained and thundered right before sunrise, but cleared up by the time we started walking! This day was our longest, but by now we had eaten most of our food and our packs were light. That evening, we arrived at the campsite (Whariwharangi) and spent a nice time talking with the others who were camping there. It rained quite a bit, so we cooked dinner on the porch of the hut. On the last day, we hiked out and met the bus that would take us back to Nelson around 11:30am. Overall, we hiked about 60 km in 5 days!

Once back in Nelson we showered and went out for ice cream and Indian food. The next morning, Fiona and I flew back to Christchurch (Kate took the bus back a day later and Lucy drove). The first two weeks of break were incredible, and the last one deserves its own blog post! Thanks for reading! Also, please leave any feedback for me in the comments – what would make this blog better? More/less pictures? More stories or context? Less writing? Let me know!