Welcome to Mapua Leisure Park
Your perfect escape in the heart of Māpua, New Zealand! Nestled along the stunning Tasman Bay, our campground offers a serene and picturesque setting for your next holiday. Enjoy a variety of accommodation options, including powered and non-powered campsites, cozy cabins, and spacious beachfront motels, all designed to suit your needs.
Explore the beautiful surroundings, with easy access to pristine beaches, scenic walking and biking trails, and the vibrant Māpua Wharf, where you can discover local shops, restaurants, local brewing company, live bands (seasonal), cafes, and artisanal delights. Our friendly staff are here to ensure you have a memorable stay, with clean facilities, BBQ areas, and plenty of space for relaxation and recreation.
Whether you’re seeking adventure or a peaceful retreat, Mapua Camping Ground is the ideal destination for families, couples, and solo travellers alike. Book your stay today and experience the beauty of Māpua.
Accommodation
The Mapua Leisure Park continues to offer a range of accommodation options from roomy tourist motels with beachfront views to snug backpacker cabins and cosy chalets.
Camping Sites
Mapua Leisure Park offers a variety of spacious camp sites with options of powered sites, powered waterfront sites and unpowered sites.
Recreational Activities
Mapua Leisure Park is situated on one of New Zealand's most beautiful beaches. The park itself has tennis courts, a sauna, swimming pool and more.
Facilities
We strive to provide a comfortable and enjoyable experience for all our guests. Our well-equipped facilities ensure that your stay is comfortable and enjoyable.
Any season is a great time to stay
While the Mapua Leisure Park’s beaches, water sports, fishing and outdoor recreation make it an extremely popular family resort during the summer, it is also a wonderful place to relax year-round.
During autumn and winter, the changing colours of nature, the traditional calm sunny days and the warmer seaside temperatures, means it is the ultimate place to re-charge your batteries. The white caps of the mountains make a stunning winter backdrop and with Nelson’s Rainbow ski field only about one and half hours away, the Mapua Leisure Park makes an excellent home base. Calm, clear sunny winter days can be a tranquil time for sea kayaking the Abel Tasman National Park.
The park offers the best of winter with a temperature that’s usually a few degrees warmer than Nelson city. Your motel, chalet or backpacker’s cabin is well heated for a warm homecoming after a day’s excursion. Winter caravanners also benefit from the park’s thoughtful design with plenty of sites situated for all day sun.
A visit to the park allows for an unforgettable experience and we are sure that you will become one of our very valued customers who long to return. An essential experience to be enjoyed by young and old alike, the kids love it, so will you.
Clothes Optional Season (in the months of February and March only).
Nude at Mapua Leisure Park is unique in the fact that it is the only clothes optional Holiday Park in New Zealand, where the choice and freedom to be clothed or nude lends to the atmosphere which the park has become famous for.
We differ greatly from Sun Clubs as it is your choice to enjoy the freedom of Clothes Optional holidaying. Check out the New Zealand Naturist Federation for a listing of New Zealand Sun Clubs.
History of Mapua Holiday Park
Almost 40 years in private ownership, the park has over 20 acres of parkland, with the tidal waters of the Waimea estuary bordering half the park’s perimeter. With views out into Tasman Bay and Rabbit Island, two national parks a short drive away, fishing, food and relaxation at our doorstep, it is no wonder Mapua Leisure Park is a holiday park like no other, where people return year after year.
Originally developed as a holiday park with an open nudity policy, it became known as “the nudey camp ground”. While the park continues to embrace its history, with nudity allowed in February and March each year, its environment has helped create amazing family experiences, which often becomes a tradition after the first or second stay.
Mapua Leisure Park has retained its park like setting, where people of all ages feel welcome and safe. Over the summer, people from around the globe, gather for a few weeks of sun, fun and family, having the freedom to enjoy the facilities in the park and the local area. Temperatures remain in the mid to high twenties over the summer and winters are mild compared to many other areas. On a perfect winter’s day, it would be hard to find a better place to sit back and enjoy your time away from the rest of the world.
Take a walk to the Māpua Wharf and see what all the fuss is about.
History of Māpua
In 1910, the surrounding area was surveyed into a township and was renamed Māpua which, translated, means abundance or prolific. The first post office and telephone exchange connecting Māpua with Nelson, opened in 1912.
Māpua Wharf was originally known as the Western Entrance and took on the new township name that surrounded it. It had become the main port in the local region, having relocated from the original port at the end of Bronte Road, known as Bronte Landing.
From 1912 the era of Māpua as the fruit shipping port began, with the shipping of up to a ton of strawberries a week. Expansion of the facilities grew over the next decade, with sheds and other amenities added to store and protect the produce. In 1921, by July, over 33,000 cases of produce had left from the wharf, a significant volume being apples. By the end of apple season in 1948, over half a million cases had passed through Māpua Wharf.
The Māpua Wharf handled almost all the fruit from the region, because it could still accommodate the bigger ships and Nelson was a significant travelling distance by road. However, in 1951, the Waterfront Workers Strike bit hard around the country. Māpua Wharf lost six months of produce and as Nelson port reopened first and had better facilities, the Māpua trade was moved there by road.
By 1957, many jobs had been lost and the wharf was no longer the centre of the community. No other commercial vessel has crossed the sand bar at the channel entrance since the wharf ceased as an export port. These days only the Rabbit Island Māpua Ferry and a variety of pleasure craft, ply the waters of the Waimea Inlet and food and retail businesses have taken over the storage sheds.
The early 2000’s saw the clean-up of the site, which was used for the production of organochloride pesticides, from the late 1940’s to the late 1980’s. By 2007, the site was decontaminated and since then the Māpua Wharf waterfront area has been redeveloped. An amphitheatre has been built on the waterfront and it has additional carparking at the rear. The wharf area has been modernised and continues to be a popular spot for locals and visitors alike.