Apparently, living in a van isn’t exactly conducive to writing regularly. Oops!

There have been so many adventures since I’ve hit the road that I hardly knew where to start until they were all over.

The past two months or so have seen me enter the South Island and complete an entire tour of the country, hitting every spot I’d wanted to see and then some.

As soon as I entered the South Island, I knew that this was the New Zealand I’d been ready for. The North Island was full of its own beauty in rainforests, beaches, and endless hot springs where one could sit and indulge all day.

But the South Island, with its hills and mountains rising at every turn, was what I’d been waiting for since I’d arrived in the country. I’d gotten a small taste of it when I’d first arrived in Christchurch, but as it had been the winter season, I’d done a very minimal amount of exploring. Now, I’d gotten to see it all.

Not to overgeneralize here, but on my joy ride around I’d seen various mountain peaks and ranges, as well as glaciers, forests, and heaps of interesting birds. One thing that I felt the North Island had on the South was its beaches. Although both islands are surrounded by water, the north’s beaches were much more striking in their surroundings, as well as their water color, than I’d found on most of the South Island. Also, there was a matter of the biting sand flies that enjoyed a vicious life on the southern west coast that really took away from the beaches for me.

One place that we’d missed in our original tour of the SI was a place called Abel Tasman National Park. This place was known for its beaches and its 60km long coastal track that can be walked and kayaked over several days. We’d come close to it at the start of our trip, but as we’d gotten close to it and retreated at one point during our stay nearby in the town of Blenheim, we decided we didn’t want to backtrack yet again just to see this one place.

As we finished the trip perfectly, wrapping up the SI just before my family came for the holidays, I kept thinking about that one spot we’d missed. It seemed sad to have lived in this country for the better part of a year, just to still have a regret of not seeing one place. With my family, I returned to Queenstown and traveled all the way back up to Blenheim, a town settled into the Marlborough wine region. We all often enjoy the Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, so my mom made a point to add it as a destination on their trip so that they could see it. While I’d of course toured a few wineries myself when I’d stopped through the first time around, there are so many wineries in the region that we managed to go to all new places this time around.

For our stay in Blenheim on New Year’s Eve, we booked a wine tour to take us around for an all-day tour that would stop at about 4-6 wineries depending how the day went. We weren’t entirely sure if it was a private or shared group tour we were taking, so it was a fun surprise to get picked up by a full van.

On the tour, we met another American family and made quick friends. We learned that the next day they were heading to Abel Tasman to hike the coastal walk, which generally takes about 3 days to complete. As we continued throughout the day with them, I felt increasingly more motivated to visit the park, and I knew it was something that would grate on me if I left the country without seeing it.

When my family left and I met back with Steve in Christchurch, I immediately suggested we use our last few days on the SI to visit Abel Tasman. Our continuing-on plan was to catch the ferry to Wellington at the end of the first week of January, and from there we would be able to house sit for a relative of Steve’s that lives in the city. That gave us the perfect amount of time to at least squeeze in a quick visit to Abel Tasman, which is near enough to the ferry that it made perfect sense to head to the top of the island a little early.

I’d been finding myself suffering constant anxiety in the passenger seat while my dad drove on the left side of the road for the first time, and unfortunately that tension stayed as I continued on as a passenger to Steve’s driving. I’d never been stressed before while he was driving, but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the lines on the lefthand side of the road. My eyes had been glued there the entire time my dad drove, as I remembered my initial struggle with this new way of driving found me continuously over the line and into the shoulders of the road. What stressed me out most on our rides was that a heck of a lot of New Zealand roads are winding their way up the sides of mountains, leaving very little shoulder except for a high drop into a lake or valley below.

Unfortunately for me, the drive into Abel Tasman was extremely windy and we found ourselves on the side of a mountain the majority of the time. With my eyes tracking that leftmost line and the tall drop right next to us, I thought I might finally throw up and combust from the anxiety.

Luckily, we made it into the park alive, and eventually I relaxed and was able to look at something other than the mesmerizing lines marking the roads. Of course, that didn’t happen until after we took a one lane, 12km gravel road around the top of the mountain to a hike that Steve wanted to explore. When I picture Abel Tasman, I picture a beautiful coastline, so I insisted that we do his hike first, and then take our second full day to hike a bit of the coastal trail. I’m glad I did, because this hike was a bit disappointing, and not worth the endless panic I felt on that gravel road in.

We hiked to Harwood Hole, a hole that experienced climbers and cavers can drop into and explore with the proper equipment. As Steve and I do not possess any experience in this wheelhouse, we were only able to take a peek over the edge and into the hole. I had already stressed my body out enough today in the “fear of heights” category, so I took the weakest look I could into the hole before calling it a day. The main highlight of the hike was our sighting of the weka bird, a native bird that had quickly become a favorite of ours after our initial meeting.

The weka bird looks sort of like a chicken mixed with a duck, and they’re flightless. They’re known as being sneaky little thieves, and will absolutely steal your car keys and drag them into oblivion if you leave them in easy grabbing distance. The majority of them have zero fear of humans, and they have on occasion come up and eaten spare granola pieces out of my breakfast bowl at some campsites.

We hadn’t seen weka in a while, so we were delighted to see them at our last stop on the SI. There are some populations of them in the north, but we’d only ever seen them on the south, and were sure it would stay that way. Lucky for us, the weka haven’t stolen anything from us except for food we’ve willingly given to them. With the first weka we’d met, we gave him one small chunk off a slice of bread at a time, and every time he would run up, snag the chunk, and run off like he was being sneaky. Then, he’d come back and do it again. It took him 6 trips to finish that one slice of bread.

So, continuing our Abel Tasman adventure, we drove to the start of the coastal walk the next day and got ourselves on the trail. The initial hike I’d wanted to do ended up being too ambitious for a day hike, so we decided to pack our swimsuits into our backpack and stop at a bay point for a swim. The majority of the track follows the coastline, so we had plenty of options for our stopping point. We stopped at one only a few hours in, following a weka friend who had popped his head out of the brush and run down the trail to where it opened up to the bay.

The beaches at Abel Tasman were different from any of the others I had seen in the country. The sands were near golden, and the water had that rich blue color that I couldn’t even place a name to. It was somehow different from the turquoise ones in the north, but a thousand times more vibrant than some of the southern ones of a softer blue.

Another thing at the back of my mind was that I hadn’t swum in any New Zealand waters. There are endless lakes begging for you to jump in, and endless coastlines of inviting ocean waves surrounding this country, but I still hadn’t dove into any of them. To be fair, the majority of the lakes were ice cold, and the most time I’d spent around the ocean had been in the winter months. But still, it felt ridiculous to leave the country without having once entered its waters. Although I don’t generally enjoy swimming in the ocean, I was set on taking up my last opportunity on the hike.

Before changing into our swimsuits, we shared some of our trail mix with the weka. Once he ran off, we took the time to set up camp and eat the sandwiches we’d packed for lunch. We’d packed three sandwiches just in case, but only ate two of them, leaving the spare in our Tupperware container. We organized our camp before hopping up and into the waters.

The ocean water took some adjusting, but the temperature was about the same as it would be at the Jersey Shore in the summertime. It takes a second to get used to, and then it ends up feeling like the perfect temperature. Steve spent his time floating around, a skill I still haven’t quite mastered. I spent my time generally avoiding getting my hair wet or being knocked over by an errant wave.

We leisurely enjoyed the water until we were ready to get out and dry off. Coming upon our camp, almost everything looked the same as we’d left it. It took us a moment to pinpoint exactly what was different, but Steve was the first to notice that our Tupperware container was now open and empty, discarded just a foot away from our picnic blanket. Instantly, we knew there could only be one culprit – our best friend, the weka. I’d wished we’d had a camera or something set up just to witness how exactly this bird got into the container and ran away with a perfectly intact ham and cheese sandwich. There wasn’t a scrap of the sandwich left around, and I can’t imagine how he looked carrying a sandwich that was nearly the size of him.

We’d been planning on sharing some bread with the weka anyways, so he’d just happened to get to it first before we could pick pieces off for him. Clearly he’d wanted the whole thing, and not just our scraps.

There were no more weka sightings as we packed up our camp and got ready to head back on the trail. I assume the weka was passed out somewhere in a food coma, though hopefully he’d shared his spoils with some friends.

Although the kiwi bird is the most famous of the New Zealand birds, I think the weka is my favorite. If I could bring one home and start our own population in Tyler Park, I would.