I always picture that Kiwis (that’s what New Zealanders call themselves) are fond of tossing in the word “brilliant” exactly where we Yanks may say “great” or “wonderful,” and outstanding exactly describes the morning as I lean towards the rail of a cruise boat skirting the Abel Tasman National Playground coastline. The north shore from the South Island is renowned for its mild climate and abundant sunshine; Abel Tasman is well-known for genuinely dazzling golden beaches, the sand gilded by iron-rich granite, curving in lengthy bights in between rocky headlands. Put those things with each other and you’ve a park immensely and deservedly well-known with hikers (in Kiwi-speak, “trampers”), sailors, sea kayakers, campers, and beachcombers. More than 20,000 individuals a year walk all or component from the 28-mile, three- or four-day trail together the coastline, and thousands of other people cruise the bays, enjoying islands, seals, and seabirds.

I invest two days walking most of the Coast Track, an easy route that alternates in between sea views and wooded valleys; my nights are invested in beachside lodges operate by Darryl Wilson, whose great-great-grandfather immigrated to this area from England close to 1860 and who now operates an all-encompassing tour company. (And all-indulging, too: Supper the first night includes grouper in parsley and wine sauce and chocolate mousse.) My fellow-trampers are a mixed lot (Colorado, Michigan, Australia, Brazil); our guide, Paris Brady, is really a ponytailed part-Maori who goes the distance barefoot, while the rest of us have to shed our boots for that occasional slosh across a tidal bay or stream mouth.

There’s history here, the two Maori and pakeha. Just close to Separation Point is where Abel Janzoon Tasman himself, the Dutch navigator who “discovered” New Zealand in 1642, first met the Maori, and vice versa. “It must happen to be like a UFO landing,” Darryl says, as we look to sea and envision two tall-masted sailing ships on the horizon, dwarfing the Maoris’ war canoes. On Awaroa Bay, near Darryl’s Homestead Lodge, he shows us exactly where the waves have exposed a foot-thick midden of discarded shells of pipi, a mollusk that was then a favorite Maori food; nearby lie blackened oven stones from cooking fires.

Tall tree ferns grow in the park (such as the lacy silver fern, one more of New Zealand’s national emblems), along with the peculiar, feather-duster-shaped nikau palm, the southernmost-growing palm in the globe. But the Abel Tasman forest—recovering from decades of logging and grazing—can’t compare to Te Urewera’s, so extravagantly lush. The allure here is rather the blue-blue tone-on-tone of bay and sky, and most especially the serene seaming of land and water at places like Onetahuti Beach (Maori, Paris tells us, for “sand to operate along”) exactly where you are able to sit down, dig your toes in, switch off the cerebrum, and attempt to keep in mind when we responded much more towards the rhythm from the tides than towards the silent tyranny of the digital watch.