from Halfmoon Bay, NZ
After an excitingly choppy ride on the high-speed catamaran that passes for a ferry over to Stewart Island, we checked in as tenters at Stewart Island Backpackers to discover that there was a school group of ~40 twelve-year-olds packing the place and generally creating havoc. On the upside, their chaperones gave us a bunch of free food including supper and dessert that night!
None of the guides were leading kayak trips the next day, so we embarked on the three-day Rakiura Track, our first overnight tramp in New Zealand and the first real test for my poor, injured foot.
The first day was mostly super- (read: disappointingly-) easy, mostly consisting of well-groomed and well-engineered gravel pathways and staircases. Of course, the forest and coast were gorgeous as we enjoyed full sun and blue skies, and the path’s monotony was broken twice as we discovered that the “high tide detours” were very muddy and very steep climbs that were completely at odds with anything else we encountered on the track. The first night’s campsite was a grassy clearing next to the beach; quite lovely despite the sandflies. We could see the glow from the mainland across the straight and saw the flash of the lighthouse that we’d passed on the ferry the day before.
Many New Zealand tracks focus on a hut system for housing trampers as opposed to camping. This means that budget-concious trampers who use the campsites to save money and avoid the crowded huts must sometimes make do with poor campsite placement compared to hut placement. Our second day was therefore a gruelling 7.5 hour grind instead of the hut-trampers’ 5.5 hour trek. Up to a summit lookout and down the other side with some boardwalk, some mud and plenty of climbing, made slightly worse by the fact that this was our first trail in umpteen months. The second campsite was nothing special, just a clearing cut somewhere in the forest, with plenty of mud.
Third day was a fairly easy 3.5 hours out along a well-formed track; not difficult in itself, but slightly painful after the previous day’s work. Overall a nice forest walk with a nice view at the top, but I wouldn’t do it again. Maybe it’ll be the Northwest Circuit next time!
The computer here doesn’t have much in the way of accessible plugs, so once more there will be no photos. Hopefully I can rectify that tragedy very soon! We’re back to the mainland tomorrow morning and scooting to Queenstown to return the car!
Cheers!