Whariwarangi hut

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After Takaka came the famous Abel Tasman park. Our first family backcountry trip was made markedly easier not having to carry a tent and being guaranteed to dry out.

Thankfully we had amazing weather. Sunny and 20 perfect for hiking. I carried the food, Ty carried the cookware and everyone else carried their own gear, even Mikaya. Zeke and Levi had the water and our hiking snacks.

Zeke bringing the trail to the street and/or counting to 6.

Whariwarangi hut is a converted farmhouse that was built in the 1890s. Still solid!

We arrived with energy to spare. There was basically no complaining about hills or packs from anyone. We dropped our packs to claim a full room for ourselves and ran right to the beach!

After dinner we walked back for sunset.

Double rainbow!

The layout of the hut was lovely and we filled our room nicely.

The weather was great so we cooked and ate outside at the picnic tables.

From Levi’s journal: [We went on a long hike with 25 lb backpacks with a 197m elevation game then we got to the hut and saw wekas there these little birds that can’t fly and have brown and black feathers

] picture included for Levi’s accurate drawing. I may do that more in the future! Here’s a photo for comparison. I think Levi nails the important bits and narrates the colour. Also he is correct walking on barnacles hurt remarkably less with shoes.

From Mikaya’s journal: [I had a backpack and it’s rilly hevy on my sholders and my mom gave us a tick tack. The wekas wood alwas cum out for food and we wood feed them seeds and flowrs and sticks and lefs]

Day 2 we had a tasty breakfast (while defending our oatmeal from wekas) and then set off for separation point to see a seal colony. The hike had some steep pitches which the kids breezed through but gave Kylie a pause. Seeing her kids down on the rock pointing at seals gave her fortitude and she did great after a few deep breaths.

After a big hike it was back to the beeeeeach.

The kids wisely engaged in a timed somersault race which I’m sure was great for their brains and didn’t result in sand in every orifice…

After another night’s good sleep and some worm wrestling we packed up and made short work of the hike out.

We drove straight to Blenheim and ordered a large amount of fried food from a local dairy (dairies here serve fried food but not dairy, I bought long expired margarine and ramen) and polished it off in minutes.

Thanks Abel Tasman and Whariwarangi Hut for making backcountry camping such a pleasure.