Visiting Meadowbank Lodge at Awaroa in the Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

It's Saturday morning and Sarah is up and out of bed before 7am! What the heck is going on? Oh, of course - we are heading off to Kaiteriteri Beach at 7.30am and then into the Abel Tasman National Park. 😂

I was up at 6.30am which is about normal for a Saturday. But no bike ride with Dad today which is my normal Saturday morning activity. We have a boat to catch.  We are taking the Wilson's water taxi, the smaller boat, up to Totaranui and then walking back to Awaroa. Below is the boat we took and behind is the bigger one that we are coming back on tomorrow. We think. 

The night away is thanks to Sealord and the fact we made our budget last year. Every employee received the choice of either this trip, a $500 restaurant voucher, or a very large toolset. We have always wanted to visit one of the lodges in the park and we are finally ticking that off. We had to pay $350 towards the trip as it must have been more expensive than the other two options. What use would I ever make of a $500 toolset!? 

Our boat is pretty small but it's quite speedy and at 9.15 we head off. First stop Split Apple Rock and then Adele Island to see a few seal pups. The morning is cool but amazingly calm and super sunny. A beautiful day to be on the water. Fortunately the original plan to start the trip yesterday was changed, by the water taxi company last week, as yesterday the weather was terrible. 

We made drop off stops at Apple Tree Bay, Anchorage, Torrent Bay, Medlands Beach and Awaroa on the way up the coast. The journey is scenic and the guide/driver "Seb" does a great job telling us about the various places. Just after 11am we are dropped off at Totaranui Beach. Gosh it's so beautiful here. No matter how many times you visit it's still super impressive. 

A quick muesli bar snack and drink at the picnic table and we set off on our walk back to Awaroa. It's supposed to take approximately 2.5 hours. There is at least one good steep hill along the walk and a very long beach with soft sand to test out our legs and lungs. We certainly aren't as fit as we were back in Thailand but the walk is not too much of a challenge. 

We reached the Awaroa inlel tidal crossing point in 1 hour and 40 minutes easily under the 2 hours suggested by the signs. We stop and enjoy our packed egg sandwiches and another drink before ditching our shoes. We wisely brought our sandles to wear to cross the muddy sandy inlet. Some of the seashells can be quite sharp. The tide is almost fully out which is perfect for getting across. That said Sarah still got the bottom of her rolled up trousers wet in the deeper spots. She should have worn her taller legs! 😂

We stopped and checked out the Awaroa DOC hut that we had to walk past and then continued to our accommodation. We are staying in relative luxury at the Meadowbank Homestead Lodge a bit further along the beach. No huts for us Flashpackers! Or not tonight at least. The lodge looks as would expect an old homestead to. Out the back are a number of studio style units where we are sleeping.

There's time for a bit of reading on the lodges sunny veranda where we enjoy the view and a coffee. Wonderful. 

Dinner is at 6ish and is included in the package, as is breakfast and a packed lunch tomorrow for the return boat trip. 

Before dinner we headed to the homestead lounge area to enjoy a Panhead hazy beer (A) and a pinot noir (S). There are 13 others staying tonight who we met while enjoying our drink. They are doing a two night guided walk with a few of them kayaking instead of walking. Today they walked from Torrent Bay to here and started at Marahau in the rain on Friday. Tomorrow they are walking up to Totaranui and grabbing the water taxi back to Kaiteriteri. We enjoyed a delicious dinner and some dinner chat. Mostly Kiwis but a few Aussies and one American made up the group.

Dinner started with a pumpkin and kumara soup that had some nice Thai flavours. Our main was Maryland chicken with roast potatoes and steamed veges. Even the brussel sprouts tasted alright. Dessert was lemon tarte with a coffee to wash it all down. After dinner we went back into the lounge area to watch a couple of short videos including one about the family that built the original Meadowbank Homestead. The one that is here now was rebuilt in the early 1990s after the original fell into disrepair. A great night with a good bunch of people. 

Breakfast was at 7.30am and to be fair it felt a bit rushed and not terribly relaxing. The rest of the guests had to out at 8.30am and so we were kind of needing to head earlier than we thought. Checkout time is 9am and a small boat is taking us across to the main beach at 9.30am.

The rest of our morning is spent chilling out in the lounge until it was time to catch the boat across to the main beach. It was Seb picking us up for the short trip across. He was mainly there doing the service run for lodge taking out the rubbish and laundry. He dropped us off and walked along the beach to check the other lodge. It was already closed up for the season but it was a nice walk. 

The boat turned up 20 minutes early and we had to quick march back along the beach to meet them. They had stopped in the way North rather than South like we were expecting. The bonus though was that we had another boat trip to Totaranui and in the big boat this time. We picked up our dinner colleagues from last night and then headed back towards Kaiteriteri stopping a couple of places and dropping most of the dinner people at Anchorage so they could have yet another walk. We headed back to Kaiteriteri and enjoyed our packed lunch and free coffee onboard the boat.

We looked up the costs of doing the full Wilson's lodge experience. If you do the 3 day 2 night package, which is normally the minimum option if you want to stay in the lodges, it's between $2,500 and $3,000 per couple. Our flashpacking budget doesn't stretch to that sort of spending! Plus the service and what you get in terms of meals is not overly flash. For that price we would expect a more premium service. But obviously there's a market for what they offer as they're still in business. All and all it was a great weekend but on reflection not something we would want to pay full price for.

We have just 3 weeks to go now until the next adventure starts!