VictoriaApril 5
It’s great to have an off day in the middle of our hikes, but an 8 a.m. set breakfast time defeats the opportunity to sleep in. We roused ourselves and headed downstairs to join the group. We were the last ones to arrive and slunk into the dining room.
We opted to relax in the morning and participate in the afternoon activity, which was a hike through the estuary at low tide.
Our destination was the golden expanse of Anchorage Beach.
From there, we took off our muddy and sandy water shoes, cleaned and dried our feet and switched to our hiking boots for the longish hike, leaving our water shoes at the Anchorage campsite to dry on the clothesline.
We climbed up a mountain to join a loop trail to the Pitt Head Lookout. The weather was beautiful, the nicest of our Abel Tasman experience so far.
We descended to Te Pukatea beach, where we had the opportunity to relax for a short break before hiking back to the lodge as high tide was starting to roll in.
We walked back across the drained out estuary as the river water started flowing in again.
Sarah suggested we walk through the river and over the sand dunes around to Front Beach to see the sandbars in front of the lodge in the sea. We walked out to them before they quickly disappeared to capture a few photos.
For our last day tomorrow, we aborted our hiking plans and decided to upgrade to kayaking instead for the 10 mile sea kayak trip back to Kaiteriteri. Since we didn’t have an opportunity to do the excursions on our days off due to the low tides, we wanted to experience the park from a different perspective. Our feet will be very grateful that we won’t have to walk another 10 miles.
Before dinner, we gathered as a group on the beach for a photo.
