My first week in New Zealand’s South Island I spent in Te
Anau, a cute little lakeside town where the backpackers is right on the water
and just down the road is The Moose, a bar with good beer and a big TV to catch
some of the tennis.
The lake is beautiful with a clear view of the mountains on the
far side and the weather has still been fantastic, super sunny and warm - perfect
for a swim. The water is cold and clear,
but when you swim out it gets very deep very quickly. Apparently in some places the water is over
300 metres deep. When you look down the
water is so clear you can see the sparkles on your toe-nail polish and below
you nothing but darkness, it’s almost as if swimming through space.
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| Lake Te Anau |
About an hour away from Te Anau is Milford Sound, one of the
must see spots in the South Island and I decided to see it by kayak. The tour was good, we had a small group and
the tour guide, Ollie, was a good mix of facts and a bit of bullshit and banter.
We jumped in the double kayaks and because I was on my own I
ended up in a kayak with Ollie. I
strapped the waterproof bag with my camera under the elastic straps at the
front of the kayak along with my drink bottle.
About five minutes after we’d paddled out into the middle of the lake I
decided to get my camera out of the bag and plop! - there goes my drink bottle,
slowing floating down into the dark and eerie depths below.
One of the major tourist
drawcards in this part of New Zealand is the Great Walks. A series of long hikes through the national
parks. The two most popular are Milford
and Routeburn tracks, but they were booked out so I signed up to do the Kepler
track, a 60 kilometre, three night, four day hike suitable for people with
moderate fitness.
It all seemed like a great idea
until the day of the hike and I looked at the outline for the next four days
and suddenly thought, oh god is my fitness moderate?! Luxmore summit is looking like an awfully big
hill!
The first two days were warm and
sunny, walking through mostly flat rainforest of tall mossy beeches and shrubby
ferns, often running along a rocky river which rushed past, deep and a bright
aqua blue.
The hut on the first night was
in an amazing location, right on the lake with a lovely little beach where I
went for a swim and a wander before sitting out in my pj’s with a cup of tea
and watching the sunset.
Because the Kepler track was
almost booked out as well I ended up doing the track backwards which meant that
although I was in huts full of people each night there were only actually four others
travelling the same direction as me. These
were four guys (who were all travelling on their own too) who would begin their
daily hike an hour after me and finish two hours before me. I wasn’t sure whether it was because they
were fast or I was slow but it could have been a little of both. They were headphones in and off they went
whereas I was tramping along, having nice long stops for lunch when I found
somewhere pretty, stopping to look at a mushroom, look at fern, watch a bird,
listen to the wind, listen to the river or the rain and occasionally take a
photo.
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| If fungus and moss are your thing, you'll love NZ |
On the third day I finally got
some of the New Zealand weather I was expecting. Misty and rainy with low lying cloud, the rainforest
is so much prettier when everything is wet.
There were three hours of switchbacks, up, up, up through the rainforest
before coming out into alpine shrubs, a thousand stairs and mist so thick you
couldn’t see a hundred metres away. And it
was quiet, not a sound to be heard.
On the last day I woke to find
the mist had cleared on the top of the mountain, so it was bright and sunny with
a view of the mountain peaks and an ocean of cloud below. And lots of noise - insects, birds and bees
everywhere. At the hut there was a pair of friendly Kea's, big alpine parrots, one who tried to bite my finger through the window.
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| There were a few birds around but I didn't see any Kiwi or Takahe |
Now off to Queenstown tomorrow to
meet mummy dearest at the airport :)
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