Abel Tasman

Abel Tasman is another destination that I had been looking forward to since we started planning the trip and made sure to fit it into the itinerary. Our campsite for these two night was The Barn Backpackers in Marahau, which was my favourite campsite for the trip. The view to the back was of the mountains and the bush, to the front we had the beach.

After cooking dinner in the van and eating while enjoying the sunset and the view of the beach with a few beers. We enjoyed the stunning views of the stars and the milky way, and we went to bed nice and early in preparation for our full day of kayaking and sailing the next day.

In the middle of the night I awoke to someone knocking on our window. My first thought was that maybe we had left our outdoor light on and it was bothering someone. I managed to open the sliding door, and a girl said, 'Just letting you know there is a fire very near by,' while her boyfriend yelled at her from the car to get going. Only then I noticed a loud siren going, and looked around to several people packing up their cars and queuing to leave. When we got out of the van and looked behind it, there was a massive column of fire behind the trees. Again, first half asleep thought were that the national park was on fire and coming towards us. The fire was crackling very loudly. We packed up the essentials in case we needed to go and woke a few other people up. Finally the park manager came to let us know that the fire was in the caravan park next door and that there was enough space in between so that it wouldn't spread. We went to the fence to look and saw that it was buildings on fire, not the bush, and that there was a big field in between and the fire engines had started to arrive. In the end we decided to stay unless they told us otherwise and went back to the van to try, not very successfully, to go back to sleep.

The next morning we got up early on time for our booked kayaking tour, feeling a bit worse for wear.