around the world in 180 days

Ok. It’s been a while since I’ve written, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. This will be a long post. Click on the link below if you want to read it all . . .

After I posted everything last Wednesday, Anna and I went out for one last good dinner before we were on trail food for 4 days. We were in Queenstown (and we are again) and we’d had a burger place recommended to us, Fergburger. It was cheap and the burgers were fantastic, but, for whatever reason, they gave Anna a problemo es stomacho. We’re not sure if it was food poisoning or just the shock of eating a big slab of red meat after so long of being mostly vegetarian, but whatever it was, it was no bueno.
So we drove up to Glenorchy, which is where the Rees/Dart track sort of departs from, not sure if Anna’s problemo would clear up or if the weather would hold for the hike. The forcast was still terrible, and we spent most of the day on Thursday hemming and hawing about what to do and finally decided to put the decision off until Friday morning. The shuttle to the track start didn’t leave until 9:30, so we had some time.
In the morning, things seemed a little better. The sun was out, and Anna had gotten a good night’s sleep. We’d packed up the night before, so we decided that we’d come to hike the Rees/Dart and we were going to hike it, weather be damned. The rest of Friday looked good, but Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be all rain, heavy rain, nasty cold rain. The DOC people had put all sorts of scary warnings up about the hike as well, like “Must have river crossing experience” and “Must have alpine experience.” We weren’t sure what that meant, but when we filled out our intents form at the DOC office, they weren’t too worried about us.
Our shuttle had four other people on it and we ended up doing most of the hike with them, because we stayed at the same hut every night. We haven’t seen hardly any Americans since we left, but there were five of us on this hike, Anna and I, Nick and Carrie, who are from San Francisco and were very nice, and Pam, from Colorado, who was also very nice and a quick walker. There was also a Dutch guy who was hilarious and kept offering us cookies and a very quiet Japanese guy who I didn’t talk to very much. He could understand english very well, but had more trouble speaking it, so he sort of just listened a lot. We’d gone into the hike and chosen this specific hike to avoid people, but it was actually fun to have a small group of others who hiked with us. It gave us something to do in the evenings and it was nice to have some people to talk to.
The hike itself was incredible. The trail follows the Rees river up into the mountains, and you walk through muddy lowlands next to the river for most of the first day. There is one larger river crossing at 25 mile creek, and a bunch of small ones that aren’t much of a worry but get your feet wet. At the end of the first day, you climb up to the treeline, getting a taste of the next day’s hike, before stopping for the night at Shelter Rock Hut.
The 2nd day was only 9 km, but we crossed the saddle, so it was lots of ups followed by lots of downs. We spent the whole day above the treeline, surrounded by mountains and glaciers and all sorts of cool stuff. This was Saturday, which was supposed to be rainy, but it stayed dry for most of the day. It had poured the night before and it was cloudy all day, but we were only sprinkled on during the day.
The 3rd day, we followed the Dart river down, and crossed Cattle Flat, a large grassy area that had fantastic views of the mountains around us. It was a much longer day, but the trail was also quite a bit easier. It had rained again the night before, so a couple of the side streams were very high and kind of dodgy to cross, but we managed it without too much trouble. Streams aren’t much of a problem if you aren’t afraid of wet feet and since our feet had been wet for the entire trip, that fear had long since passed.
Yesterday, the 4th day, we walked out and met our shuttle. Most of the day was in Beech forest, so we had a great atmosphere, but the views were not really there. We were picked up at 2 and drove down to Queenstown, where we had some pizza and a few beers with Nick and Carrie. It was a good time and a fantastic hike. I’m glad we didn’t let the weather scare us off and I’m glad Anna’s problemo es stomacho passed in time for the hike.
Today we don’t really have any plans yet. We leave NZ on Saturday, so we know we’ll be going somewhere, driving north and west, but we haven’t decided where we’re going to stay. The hut warden at the 2nd hut told us about a place along the West coast that had a small hut next to a bunch of hot springs, so that’s pretty tempting for an overnighter tomorrow, but we’re not sure how far away it is.
So yeah. The Rees/Dart was awesome, the weather was great during the day and rainy at night and we had a great time.

Tags: New Zealand, tramping, Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.