We took a day trip to Milford Sound today. Luckily, the rain stopped for the first time in almost a week!
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
After a couple of days in Queenstown, Gruff, Lucy and I left for a 4-day trip around the South coast, stopping off in Dunedin, Invercargill and Te Anau before returning to Queenstown via Milford Sound. I had been looking forward to this part of my trip since arriving in Auckland, and even though I only had time for one day in each place, I was determined to make the most of it.
Our first stop was Dunedin which was originally a Scottish settlement and is modelled on Edinburgh. Unfortunately the weather was much the same as Edinburgh (Harsh winds and rain that fell sideways!), which made exploring the city a bit uncomfortable! Especially as I’d been acclimatising to Australian weather for the last 6-months or so, and my only hat was designed to protect from the heat, rather than driving rain!
Another reason I was looking forward to getting to Dunedin was that a friend of mine from university had moved there the week before and we’d arranged to meet for a few drinks that night. After fighting through the rain again, I met John and Bhav in the Octagon (which makes up the centre of Dunedin), and ended up in a small Scottish bar with a good selection of whisky, but no Tennent’s (which was probably a good thing). I hadn’t seen John since we graduated and after being away for 6-months it was good to see a familiar face on the other side of the world!
The rain still hadn’t stopped by the time we left for Invercargill the next morning, which was a bit of a pain as we were passing through the most Southerly point in New Zealand, where the next major landmass is Antarctica! The drive through the Catlins was stunning (even though we couldn’t see very much of it!), and by the time we reached Curio Bay the weather was starting to ease, although not enough to make swimming with the dolphins that take shelter there sound like a sensible idea!
After a night in Invercargill we left for Te Anau, stopping along the way at Lake Manapouri. By this time the rain was finally starting to ease up a bit, and it was beginning to look likely that we would have a dry day for our trip out to Milford Sound!
I walked through Mordor yesterday. The part of it along the ~18km Tongariro Crossing anyway.
It’s supposedly one of the best single-day walks in the world, and taking a fairly leisurely pace, I completed it in a little under 8 hours.
The trail begins with a nice walk though the heather for an hour or so (which I thought was a bit like home) before beginning to climb the “Devil’s Staircase”. It’s a pretty apt name for an hour-long slog up some poorly defined steps cut into the rock. The views are good, but the climb almost killed me! Eventually the stairs ended, and we waved goodbye to the small group mad enough to climb “Mount Doom”. The rest of us were rewarded with a nice flat plain to walk across, before assaulting the Red Crater Ridge, which was our last big climb of the day.
From the ridge, the track led us down to the Emerald Lakes, across the Central Crater and on to the Blue Lake, where we stopped for lunch. From here the track was almost entirely downhill, and after a couple of hours we reached the Ketetahi Hut, which serves as a toilet stop and place to refill water bottles.
The final stage of the walk took us downhill though the heather and on into a small woodland section. In my opinion, this was even worse than the Devil’s Staircase, as the afternoon sun was out and the track twists and winds to the point that it doesn’t seem to end. Indeed, there’s no indication that you’re near the end until you round a bend and find yourself stumbling into the car park!
The hike was the worst most challenging thing I’ve done in New Zealand, and though I’ve no desire to do it again, I’m definitely glad to have done it!
