Abel Tasmin National Park

There are no public roads into the Abel Tasmin National Park. Travelers who want to visit,  hike in on multiple day treks carrying all their gear with them.

When we talked to our trail guide yesterday, she suggested that an alternative was to take a water taxi out of Marahau up to the park.  So that is the plan for our visit today to take a trek to Cleopatra's pool in from Torrence beach and then water taxi home again. 

Our first surprise was that they loaded the boat with about 20 of us young people while the boat was still on the trailer, and then hauled the boat across the wide beach with a tractor to launch it.  There are very high tides here so the beach is enormous then the tide is out. 

On the cruise to Torrence Beach, we passed a named rock formation, the "split apple".   And we saw a Dusty Dolphin and also a local bird called a gannet, sort of like a very large sea gull with a yellow head and black tail feathers.  They are famous for their aerial fishing, being able to dive from a 100 feet in the air, hitting the water at 60 mph to catch fish.  

When the boat dropped us off at Torrence Beach, we were in shallow water, but a good ways from the beautiful beach. The bottom was sandy though so it was no problem walking in to shore.

Our trek led us across the beach and up a well marked trail into the forest.  All the sign post distances were marked in meters, so it was a little hard to tell how far things were away.  We hiked inward and upward towards Cleopatra's pool, 
Does this look like the hike up Lookout in Montreat to you? 

The actual trail was fairly steep in places and finally led directly across this freezing fast flowing creek to lead to the pool.It was something of a feat to get across, but was part of the adventure.  We also saw more beautiful lush jungle-like plants and the fern trees along the way.  This is a picture of one from the top looking down as we came along the path, 

We only stayed for a few minutes enjoying the view of the waterfall into the pool and the very clear water. 


We then headed on towards Anchorage beach to catch the 1:00 pm water taxi back to the car.  We had reservations on that boat, but unfortunately by the time we had completed the 4 mile trek, it was 1:30 and we missed it. We waited in a shelter there, and one of the campers started a fire for us to warm up (since by then it was raining.  We saw a small brown bird scurrying around that I thought might be a kiwi, but one of the kids said it was a Weka. 

By the time the 2:30 shuttle came, it was overloaded, so we had to do some talking to get ourselves on it.  But the pilot was very nice and he told the young folks on it, that we had to make room for the "old people" and they let us sit while 3 of them stood for the 45 minute ride home! I guess white hair has some advantages since I was pretty well tired out by then.