Abel Tasman Great Walk - Awaroa to Totaranui

The night was hot, and we woke up, as usual, with dawn. Today is a long crossing through the bay at low tide, and it's quite late. We have plenty of time to start the day.

It's good, because the group of ladies is cumbering the kitchen space and the pic nic tables outside are sand flies’ territory. Not a great place to prepare breakfast.

We wait until some path and clutter is cleared so we can access the cooking benches and get ourselves fed.

Crossing inlet is funny, this one was a pretty long one and the middle has a river so you are guaranteed to get somewhat wet. On the other side it's a bit of a traffic jam as everyone clean their feet ( rebandaged blisters ) and get their walking shoes on.

It's a short 2h walk to the end of our trail for us.
This last part has a long stretch of beach walking , which is nice at first but by the end of it, your ankles are screaming murder. ( at least my left one did ).

We decided to get a boat from Toratanui back to Marahau instead of continuing the great walk to the end ( adding one more night ). Organizing the car pick up, or car relocation to the very end of this trail was quite pricey and was an extremely long drive to starting point.

We arrived around 11am at the pick-up point along this nice beach and campsite. Our boat is at 12:15. We unfolded our small camping chairs and found a shaded patch of tree to wait for it.

I really enjoyed this great walk, the Abel Tasman coast is absolutely stunning, plus it's quite an easy one. We have discovered a very different landscape and a non-challenging hike with beach stops along the way added so much more to this experience.
The boat back to Marahau is good experience as well, because you see from afar the beach and coves you walked along. You also realized that you have indeed walked quite a bit ! The funny bit was also that to bring the customers back, the boat just drive right on the tractor’s trailers and then we have land boat ride a few km to their office ! 

We still have to walk 20min to where we parked our car. We parked it at the camp site we stayed at the first nice, and because of this we were able to use their showers. By that time, I had only one cold beach shower in Awaroa and my hair was the texture of cardboard.

After getting ourselves clean and a good change of closed, we drove back to Motueka for resupply, laundry and lunch. Time to find a couple of bits and pieces that we needed to replenish, such as Band-Aids. I had massive blisters on this hike, and the ones we had on our emergency kit were too old, they didn’t stick on your feet anymore. Therefore, I used an industrial quantity of it every day.

Once this was done, we drove for another 2h inland through the Buller Gorge to the DOC Campsite of Lyell. This was to be a little over half way to our next day stops.
As we arrived (quite late), it started to rain, so we didn’t really enjoyed the scenery. We had this bit of luck that at the camp site, it was fairly dry and the showers had stopped so we could set up our tent easily.

This could have been a great campsite. Right in the mountain on a cliff edge overlooking the river below. It’s also the start of a multiday walk called the old ghost road. There is also a lot of information about the town of Lyell itself ( which doesn’t exist other than some remnants as part of a short trail departing from the campsite ), which was the first one to be set up following a gold rush in the 1860 to 1920. 

Unfortunately, it was infested with sand flies. Like up to your mouth – and even with all the repellent in the world, we got eaten alive.  The camp site facilities themselves were the dirtiest I had ever seen – a shame really. Luckily, we were safe from the bugs inside the tent, so we just huddle there and hope for a decent night.