EPIC Day in New Zealand's Abel Tasman National Park 🇳🇿 Great Walks of New Zealand

We're checking out Abel Tasman today here in New Zealand. Abel Tasman is the smallest national park and yet one of the most highly trafficked national park in all of New Zealand. Full of these remote beach coves, this rugged coastline and lush dense forest holds a lot of hidden treasures that we are going to dive into and check out today. So during the summertime this cove has somewhere between 70 and 80 boats in it and right now there is no one else here. Pretty eerie. We got dropped off by what they call a water taxi. So they have these water taxis that will shuttle you to these remote beaches and there's huts here, dock huts, and the water taxi for us one way was $40 a person. $40 New Zealand per person. You can also just hike in. However we're trying to make the best of some really good weather today and it's supposed to be a string of bad weather starting tomorrow. So we figured we'd just take the water taxi in and then hike out, do a day hike. You can also rent kayaks, sea kayaks, and take the same route that the water taxi took but just human powered. Paddle in with a kayak, check out the rocky coastline, these bays. There's so many of these beautiful beaches all along the Abel Tasman coast here. The low tide track that we're going through right now. The interesting thing about Abel Tasman is their tides are really big swinging. So this low tide drops five meters. So 15 feet of water they lose at low tide. And you can see the entire area is like a mud flat right now. And in fact when they launched the boat, the water taxi this morning, they used a tractor to drive out on the mud flat and drop the boat in. It's pretty crazy. A unique way to launch a boat that I have not seen before. You can actually smell the fermented fruit smell, that really sweet smell of the black sooty fungus making that honeydew with the aphids who feed off that fungus. And then of course the bees produce that honeydew honey, that strong sweet fermented fruit, slightly rotting fruit smell. It's just permeating the whole mud flats right now and it's truly an exhilarating experience with the sound of the birds in the background. They actually have a couple waterfalls back here and actually there are some canyoneering routes back here. Unfortunately the Abel Tasman canyoning company has closed up for the season. So we're just going to go poke around see if we can check out some waterfalls. Probably not going to get up in there because we don't have any technical gear. But just scope it out, check out some nice waterfalls. There's also some nice swimming holes. Nice natural water slides but a lot of them you need the technical gear to get to. So who knows what we're going to be getting into. We're just gonna just gonna see what we find. seen any big drops. Saw that other waterfall back there, Cascade Falls. I was on a creek. This is Falls River, wide river. Not too heavy flow right now. No big drops yet. So a key for this type of adventure is the footwear and Sam and I both have on the number one water shoe I recommend for this type of adventure. The Adidas Terex Voyager with that stealth rubber sole. That is the key. You try to do this in hiking boots or any other type of water shoe and you are surely going to slip and bust your ass, crack your head, chip your tooth and it's not going to be fun. That stealth rubber sole is the key. But of course, even with the stealth rubber soles, some rocks are just too slippery. Covered in moss. They're really wet. And so even with those stealth rubber soles, they're not magic and you can still slip. They're just a lot more grippy than most of the other shoes on the market. So I just boulder hopped upstream there. Pretty slippery. A lot of moss and kind of at the top of this narrow section there's a large pool and the river bends to the left and that looks to me the bottom of the technical section that they canyoneer. There's a ton of big steep drops and look like a nice big slide but unfortunately without technical gear we're not going to be able to access that slide today. So I know where it is now. So when I come back to New Zealand with my technical gear, I might have to run that solo. Plenty more stuff to get into today in Able Tasman. Let's go see what else we can find. Well the tide has come in now on that little that inlet that we crossed earlier. Those mud flats. So you can see the beautiful color of the water here in Able Tasman. Cleopatra's pool here in Able Tasman. Has a little baby natural water slide there and I was planning on sliding it however that water is so cold I'm not sure if I'm going to do it. What do you guys think I should do? Get out there find your adventure and be infamous. Infamous.