As much as we like seeing beautiful and unique scenery, we don't always look forward to the twenty kilometre treks that come with them. That was one of the great things about the US, as they put roads right next to everything so you can drive up, lean out of your air-conditioned car and take some pictures. Well, we're not that lazy really. We do enjoy the walks, but sometimes you can walk for seven hours and only have one or two things to look at, but in the case of Abel Tasman National Park it was worth it.

The park is the smallest of all the New Zealand National Parks, and is made up of several beautiful bays and coves, any of which could be in the Caribbean. The water is so clear and a beautiful greeny-blue colour, and the beaches are all soft sand. The coastal track is mostly behind the coastal tree line, though there are a number of places where you come out to a viewing point to spectacular views.

Many people hike for a few days here, though we chose the one day hike due to time, so took a boat ride a few miles up the coast to Bark Bay from our camp in the morning. Stupidly we wore our walking trousers and shoes, not realising we had to jump out of the boat into two feet of water....not a great start to the day.

The walk was just over twenty kilometres, though more if you did not cross Torrent Bay during low tide, so we set off straight away as Torrent Bay and high tide were both two hours away. Torrent Bay is one of the only populated places in all of the New Zealand National Parks, as before it was made a national park people lived there, so were told they could stay but on smaller plots. Therefore now it is some of the most expensive real estate in New Zealand.

After two hours we made it to Torrent Bay, to find the tide was already high enough to make small streams across the bay. This meant jumping across them, though unfortunately some of the streams were about five or six feet at the narrowest point. After getting really wet shoes and socks, Rich realised he had dropped one of the legs of his trousers (which we zipped off after getting soaked from the jump out of the boat), so had to run and jump back across to find it. Eventually we made it across, though with raw feet after we took off our shoes and had nowhere to wash our feet off, so carried on walking on the track barefoot!

So we made it to Anchorage after all that, which is a beautiful bay just south of Torrent Bay, where we sat down for some lunch. At first it seemed idyllic, as we were the only people on the beach, but this meant of course we were also very popular with the seagulls, which tried to steal food from our hands until Rich started chasing them around with his pen knife. Also the huge bees seemed to like us, but they seemed to chase Rich around instead. We were lucky though, as a lot of people turned up half an hour later than us, just as the sun disappeared and the wind picked up, so the sand was whipping against people as we left to finish the walk.

After another ten kilometres and a few more bee attacks, we finished the walk tired and with a few blisters, but happy as it was some of the best coastal scenery we have seen. As there are no roads in the park, it really is unspoilt and free from lazy tourists who want to go lay on the beach, so in this case we were glad for the long walk.