The Queen Charlotte Track closely follows the coastline of Queen Charlotte and Keneperu Sounds for 70km between historic Ship Cove and Anakiwa. With its ever-present scenery of sparkling turquoise waterways and lavish coastal forest, this 2-5-day track is a strong contender for ‘most beautiful coastal walk in New Zealand.

Much of the sparsely populated Sounds has no road access and we’re en route to Ship Cove in a water taxi with fellow hikers, an excited young family on a camping trip, and an elderly couple hovering over a large pile of neatly labelled cardboard boxes. In this remote area, the water taxi is a passenger shuttle, supply delivery, and sightseeing cruise rolled in one with priority given to the regular mail and supply delivery to residents at private properties.

I imagine the excitement of recipients is similar to our joy about grocery deliveries in managed isolation, because, well it’s food and also your only connection with the outside world.

The elderly couple is to be dropped off next, but as we bob up and down near a jetty, they stay on board and glancing at a few houses nestled deep into the greenery, shake their heads. No, this doesn’t seem to be the right place, but then hundreds if not thousands of tiny, bush-fringed bays lapped by turquoise waters and remote jetties in this elaborate maze of waterways all look alike. The skipper heads into the next cove and the couple gets off, hauling supplies to last them a month.

On the onward journey to Ship Cove, we drop off deliveries to more jetties and I wonder how often people here actually make an escape from their voluntary isolation back to civilization for mundane tasks such as grocery shopping, if ever.

From Ship Cove, we set off to our first campsite, carrying big backpacks. We’re the only ones on the track stupid enough to do that with luggage transfers being available – don’t be us.

Also, after camping on the Queen Charlotte Track ourselves, my advice is not to camp. It’s not a back-country wilderness experience anyway, so you might as well take advantage of that and do it in style: stay in a comfortable lodge with complimentary kayaks to explore Queen Charlotte Sound from the water, enjoy a meal and drinks in a fine restaurant with sea views, and afterwards an outdoor soak in the hot tub or spa bath. Take a packed lunch with you the next day. None of the Great Walks offers that kind of comfort, yet scenery-wise the Queen Charlotte Track can easily compete with the best of them.

That’s already the two aspects that make the Queen Charlotte Track one of the best coastal walks in New Zealand and the world even when I compare it to the Otter Trail in South Africa, Great Ocean Walk in Tasmania, or Abel Tasman Track right next door:

For one thing, the Queen Charlotte Track allows one to truly see and experience the beauty of the Sounds all along the way, not just offering an occasional glimpsed view of the twisting waterways through the dense coastal forest here and there. For another thing, it’s one of the very few multi-day trails in the country that you can walk independently, without a guide, but still in style.

The track wanders along in undulating ups and downs, climbing a ridge only to drop into the next bay. It demands no noteworthy climbs but constantly changes our perspective of the Sounds. After climbing away from the water’s edge through native bush of tree fern and podocarp, beech and manuka, the track spills into a little clearing on the saddle with magical views of the winding waterways of Queen Charlotte Sound and Kenepuru Sound, and to the Kapiti Coast on the North Island.

Just below, a couple of small sailing boats anchor in a sheltered cove and rock softly on the waves that travel across from a motorboat’s path and lap gently on a quiet sandy bay. A couple of wooden jetties give away the houses hiding well from view in the seemingly impenetrable bush. I like that; occasionally passing by signs of civilization – be it a couple of remote baches (New Zealand holiday homes) in the Sounds, small mountain villages along the Annapurna Circuit, or refuges on the Tour du Mont Blanc – even more than solely hiking through the remote, unpopulated wilderness.

As the trail disappears back into the greenery, I take notice of the small birds, mainly fantails and bellbirds keeping us company. I’ve never taken much note of birds before, but as there’s very little wildlife in New Zealand, even I have developed an interest in watching the birds.

My favourite is the robin, a sparrow-sized grey bird endemic to New Zealand that is alarmingly inquisitive. Known to land on people, who’re generally thrilled by close wildlife encounters, it is equally friendly with rats, possums, and the likes that also enthusiastically reciprocate this naive creature’s interest. The latter encounter is generally fatal to the robin.

When tourists believe they’ve spotted not only one but two kiwis sitting under their picnic bench begging for food in broad daylight, they have in fact met the ground-dwelling weka. Apart from a certain optical similarity, these two flightless birds are fundamentally different. Your chances of seeing a kiwi in the wild are almost nil.

Your chances of not being pestered by a weka are equally low. They’re annoyingly curious or plain cheeky, I’m still pondering which when one runs off with Tobi’s jandal (i.e. flip-flop) in our lunch break, we in pursuit. Traipsing through the undergrowth, I decide that cheeky it is.

But a nice kind of cheeky; not feisty and bold like New Zealand’s infamous picker of windscreen wipers, destroyer of campervans, and occasional slayer of sheep, the kea. This large olive-green mountain parrot wreaks havoc for the fun of it but lives mainly in alpine, not coastal areas and we don’t see any in the Sounds.

The majority of New Zealand’s birds however is easygoing and rather slow. They run, hop, or wobble along and use their limited capacity to fly (if any) only as a last resort. The most vivid example of this reluctance to spread the wings, is the introduced California quail, a fixture at any campground. With its curving plumb furiously bobbing to and fro, we usually see it fleeing from new arrivals as it races across the campsite greens, shooing eight baby quails to safety.