Adventure of a Lifetime: "Goodnight, don't let the sand flies bite"

We (Jack, Katie, Bryan, Sarah, Diana, Christie, and myself) went tramping in one of the wettest places on earth during the 2nd week of break. The Routeburn Track in Fiordland National Park. Surprisingly enough we were very fortunate to have beautiful weather the entire time!!! It was a three day and two night 32km trip. The first day we set out and didn't have far to go until our camp. Lots of pretty scenery along the way with pretty pristine rivers and lush, green, and dense mountain beech forest. When we arrived at camp the first thing we did was pitch our tents and then pretty much everyone climbed into one two person tent and fell asleep. When we awoke, everyone was hungry. That means Tommy has to get out his cooker or else everyone would starve. Everyone seamed to like my idea of having freeze dried meals as well. It was easy and worked well so everyone wasn't fighting after food. After dinner we took some pictures and Bryan, Jack and I indulged in some of our Silver Patron. We took shots with lemon juice and it was the smoothest tequila I have ever had. Very yummy! Upon drinking, Bryan introduced us to a card game that he learned from a danish lad. It sort of reminded me of the card game golf. Certain cards are worth a certain amount of points and when you're ready you declare it. The winner creates a rule at the end. Funny thing is Bryan didn't know the name of the game. So at the end of one of the rounds, Jack announced that you have to give an 'animal fact' when you pull a certain card. From then on that game became to be known as "Animal Facts". Afterwards, Jack, Bryan and I went for a walk in the dark. In an open grass field kicked up what we thought was a owl but it actually turned out to be a Kia. These birds are big green parrots and are one of the smartest birds in the world. Never feed a Kia, especially chocolate! Anyways Jack and I returned our tent and before I went to bed I said to Jack......"good night, don't let the sand flies bite". Sand flies are one of the very few things I could say I don't like about New Zealand. They are very small insects that don't hurt when they bite but after they do bite, it becomes itchy, almost like poison ivy. Not so much fun.

The next morning Bryan awoke at 6am to a Kea trying to break into his tent. Not a bad thing because he needed to get up anyway. He had only bought a one night pass, which worked out excellently because he was able to pick us up at the end of the trail at The Divide. Sucked because he did have to drive all the way from Glenorchy (start of the trail) to The Divide (end) which took about 6 hours. There is no direct route because of the mountains so what could have been a hr trip took 6 hours because of how the road was routed. Back to our story. We packed up and moved on to tackle the hardest part of the trail. Amongst viewing the pretty scenery we broke up the monotony by playing games on the move like - the one where anybody could ask you questions for a certain amount of time. Good way to know people very quickly, We also to talked a lot and got to know one another. We reached "the saddle" which was a pretty good break point and ate lunch. Fog moved in very quickly and the air in the saddle was very cool and hazy. After cooling off almost completely, it was a little difficult to get moving again. After a couple more hours of hiking we reached a lake where we then saw the Lake Mackenzie hut. That's another thing is these huts were enormous and had lots of bunks! Unfortunately, we were not able to get into any because they were all booked. We finally arrived at our second camp and again pitched our tents. After setting them up we went for a walk to the "split rock". It was actually a ginormous split rock the you could walk in between for a good 100ft. We then went to the nearby lake and skipped rocks. Everybody was very impressed on how good I was a skipping rocks (thank you Black Lake). We then headed back to camp, ate and pretty much all went to bed. We all told bedtime stories first though. I told a story about an elf and actually did a decent job.

The next day wasn't too bad as far as hardness. We were able to see to see the gorgeous Earland Falls which was 174m high. Also we could see snow covered mountains in the distance. Pretty sure it was Mt Cristina. We arrived at the divide and were able to eat lunch while we waited for Bryan to pick us up. He was our only hope (apart from hitchhiking which actually isn't too hard in NZ) and weren't sure how long we would be waiting, but when that red Honda Odyssey came scootin in, we were all pretty relieved.

We drove back to Wanaka that night and went out to the movies. Best theatre experience I have had in a long time. We watched Eye in the Sky which was a good movie about drone warfare that had Alan Rickman and Aaron Paul. It was fun because the theatre provided ice cream, drinks (Hopped up on Pippin) and very tasty chocolate chip cookies. Was a great time!!!

Lots of pictures on this one!!!

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