New Zealand · The Top of the South
Nelson & Abel Tasman
Golden beaches and alpine passes, an hour apart.
The Region
The top of the South Island is the only place in New Zealand where you can kayak a golden-sand marine reserve in the morning and picnic beside an alpine lake before dinner. Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks sit an hour apart, with the sunniest town in the country, its vineyards and its artists, in between.
We are excited about where Nelson is going — superb local operators, a steady arrival of beautiful places to stay, and it has quietly become one of our top four destinations. One of our designers, Cara, lives at Ruby Bay just up the coast, which is the kind of local knowledge no brochure survives contact with.
01
A Moment We Design
The park, by air and paddle
A helicopter lifts you over Abel Tasman’s string of turquoise estuaries and sets you down where the kayaks wait. You paddle the granite coast with seals for company, and the boat that collects you has lunch aboard. The classic day at the top of the South — and it never has to touch a car park.
02
A Moment We Design
Split Apple from above
The famous cleft boulder at Towers Bay is photographed a thousand times a day from the beach, and almost never from a private retreat on the cliff above it. Dinner up there, with the tide working the rock below, reorders your sense of the familiar.
03
A Moment We Design
The Heaphy, the short way
The Heaphy Track takes trampers five days; the helicopter takes eleven minutes. You walk the finest hour of it, nīkau palms against a wild Tasman shore, and are home for the vineyard’s last pour. Purists may object. Purists usually do.
The Region, In Pictures
A helicopter over the sandbars of an Abel Tasman estuary
When To Come
The season is part of the design
Nelson banks more sunshine hours than anywhere in New Zealand, and the park’s estuaries are at their impossible turquoise best from December to April.
Autumn is the insiders’ pick: settled weather, warm sea, harvest on the tables and the water traffic gone home.
And of course, Split Apple Retreat was perfect. We couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful introduction to New Zealand!
Alex & Ryan · United States
Where You Might Stay
The lodges that live here
A handful of the places we place guests in Nelson & Abel Tasman. Each carries a dossier: who it suits, the nights it deserves, how we set it inside a journey.
Design your journey
Tell us what pulled at you here. We'll design the journey around it, with the right people waiting when the helicopter lands.
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