Abel Tasman- Day 4

Day 21- February 26th

Then at four I woke up to find my sleeping bag soaking wet. I was confused as to why, as I had been careful to get my fly set up right. Then I realized that the floor of my tent was an inch deep in water. I put on some soaking wet clothes and got out of my tent. I found that there was a stream of water running right through my campsite. My new campsite was right below the concrete foundation of the old quarry and all of the water ran off of this into my tent. Most tents have a bathtub floor, meaning that the waterproof floor material extends up the side of the wall a few inches to keep this kind of thing from happening. My tent was 15 years old, so it didn’t have this feature.

I waited for my parents to wake up, and then packed all of my stuff into my bag wet. We had to cross Awaroa before 12:00, and it was a three hour hike, so we couldn’t wait for our stuff to dry. It was uncomfortable hiking in wet clothes, but it wasn’t cold out so it wasn’t too bad.

 

Photos by Russ White

We got to Awaroa at 10:30. We debated just staying at the lodge here and canceling the rest of our hike. The lodge was built on an inholding and we had stayed here 11 years ago. We didn’t want to camp that night in wet tents, and if it didn’t stop raining we wouldn’t have a chance to dry out our stuff. But it was expensive, and it looked like the rain was stopping, so we went ahead on.

Awaroa bay is very large and flat, meaning that crossing it is  very dependent on the tides. It is sort of like Mud Bay, a bay in my hometown of Haines, AK. We were able to cross, but one spot was a bit too deep for my sister.

After it stopped raining we stopped at a Goat’s Bay and dried out our stuff, then continued on to Totaranui. This was the only campground with a road, and had 9-10 different camping lots. It also had a park ranger station. We filled up our water bottles, and then continued on to Anapai Bay. This campground was much smaller and had a nicer beach. We finished drying out our stuff and relaxed for the rest of the day. The campground had a couple of Weka birds that kept trying to steal our trash, and they were funny to watch.

We had instant mashed potatoes with freeze dried ground beef and green beans. We had rice pudding for desert.