200+ km Walked: The Holidays, Kiwi Style

If you ever were to stick around and read a blog post, this is the one, because she’s a doozy! I have done 16 total days of tramping in the past 3 weeks and have come away with a couple of bumps and bruises and some good stories.

First, though, a bit of news: I am starting work with Ticketmaster this week. It’s not many hours at first, but at least it’s something! I will keep looking for a second job, but this proves to me that I am not completely useless and unhire-able. Sometimes, somebody says something to or about you that just sticks in your head and gives you a little boost of self-confidence every time you think about it. In my “you’re hired” email, the person who had interviewed me wrote “I believe you will be a fantastic addition to the team I’m building”, which is one of those self-confidence boosting statements for me.

I celebrated Christmas this year with Travis’s family – it was only my second ever Christmas not being with my family. Last time I was away I was in Brazil, which was a pretty lonely and difficult experience. This year, however, was really lovely. Ethan, Travis’s older brother, flew over from Australia where he is working, and the three of us drove up to Blenheim together on Friday afternoon. The next morning, we had breakfast together at Travis’s parents house with his parents and three brothers, and then did Christmas gift giving. In Travis’s family, they always do a Secret Santa within the family, so that each of the 6 family members doesn’t have to give everybody a gift. This year, I was included in that, and had the task of giving Travis’s mum Zeean a gift, which seemed easy at first then turned out to be difficult, but I did end up finding a nice metal wall decoration with some fantails that Travis agreed she would really like. Ethan was my Secret Santa, and it turned out that he only learned about my existence when told that – evidently, he asked “who’s Ronja? Did you misspell Joel?” (Joel and Isaac are the other two brothers). Other people also give each other gifts in addition to the Secret Santa – Travis and I got each other gifts as well, and of course the parents gave all the kids gifts. Most of the family is big into tramping, so many of the gifts were tramping equipment, and I fit right in there. Travis and his parents teamed up to give me a new sleeping bag, and I chipped in some as well. It was not a secret – we picked it out and bought it together – but it is a very nice sleeping bag that is down and much lighter than my other one, and very warm. Part of my gift to Travis was a little gadget with which you can transfer gas for cooking while tramping between canisters to combine half full ones – Zeean had the same idea and also got Travis a similar one.

Later that day, we went over to Zeean’s parents house for a larger family Christmas. Travis’s uncle and cousins and great aunt and uncle were all there, 14 people total. We did a white elephant gift exchange in the early afternoon there (if you are not familiar with white elephant, basically, all the gifts are put in the middle and an order of people is established. Each person can either open a gift from the middle or steal one that has already been opened.) The theme of the white elephant was things that start with the letter “B” – notable gifts included butter, booze, a bucket, and bug repellent. I gave a combo gift of a basket with a beer and a Bible inside, and ended up with a nice water bottle. Afterwards we had a nice dinner before everyone went home around 7.

One more funny note about Christmas and meeting Travis’s family: most of the children in the family are boys, girls are few and far between, and as a result the gender ratio is heavily skewed. When I first met Travis’s grandma, she gave me a hug and said emphatically “I’m happy you’re here, it’s so nice to have another woman joining us, there aren’t many of us in this family you know”. It’s always nice to feel wanted, and I think I left a good impression in the end – on leaving she said I was always welcome back.

The next morning, it was time to get down to business and pack for the tramp, as we were leaving that afternoon. I had done most of my packing beforehand, and so didn’t have all that much to do. The rest of the family (those coming on the tramp – Zeean, Ethan, Travis, and Isaac) on the other hand did have a lot to do, and managed to make it into an incredibly stressful experience that left me in tears by the end, just from absorbing all the stress in the room.

We finally managed to get on the road around 1 and drove to Lake Rotoroa. When we got out of the car we were attacked by a swarm of bloodthirsty sandflies, and rushed to the water taxi which took us across the lake to D’Urville Hut. As soon as we stepped off the boat, Isaac realized that in the hurry he had managed to forget his bag with his wallet, charger, and power bank in the car. We entered the hut to find that a group of bogans had made it into their holiday home for the week – they cleared away some space for us and weren’t too noisy thank goodness. Ethan, however, took one look at the hut and declared that he would walk the 4 hours to the next hut after dinner rather than sleep there. Isaac decided to join him, and so they skedaddled, with a request from Travis for them each to write a 1000 word essay on why they were sorry to leave us, and a half-made promise to Zeean not to kill each other.

Travis, Zeean and I headed up the next morning and found them at Morgan Hut, complaining about each other’s snoring but both still alive (no essay in sight though). We then headed up to George Lyon Hut, getting there right as it started to rain. We had this hut to ourselves, and so Ethan decided to stay, but slept in a separate bunk room from the rest of us.

The next morning started off well with Travis claiming he was a single man – he was asking Isaac if he wanted to switch tents because Isaac’s tent was a one person tent and therefore lighter than the two person tent Travis was carrying for us. I stated that Travis would be a single man by the end of the trip if he kept on like that, and Isaac refused to switch anyway.

That day we walked up and over Moss Pass, which was an incredibly steep climb through the forest with roots as hand and footholds until we got above the bush line. There were plenty of Vegetable Sheep, which is a very cool looking kind of alpine plant. (Side note – I am obsessed with Vegetable Sheep because when I was volunteering at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research while studying abroad, I took a tour of their herbarium. Most of the plants were pressed and filed away in cabinets, but the Vegetable Sheep defied the system and had to be kept in a box on top of the cabinets because it couldn’t be pressed. )We had lunch just before heading up the last section to the top of the pass. Isaac had been cheeky and was reprimanded for it, and so he was grouchy and walking up ahead, when suddenly he sent a large boulder tumbling down the mountain (far enough away from us thank goodness). Zeean almost had a heart attack because she thought it was Isaac tumbling down the mountain.

Once we reached the top of the pass, we could see down to Rotomairewhenua / Blue Lake on the other side. It was a steep climb down, with the first section being a gulch filled with loose rocks. Zeean was very nervous for this section, and so Ethan took her pack down to the bottom, and then she and I made our way down together on all fours, with me patiently picking out the steps and making sure every move I made was easy and replicable. We made it to the bottom unharmed, only slightly scared from when Ethan had sent some rocks tumbling down on his way back up past us. He went to go climb a mountain while Zeean, Travis, Isaac, and I slowly made our way down to the hut.

Once at the hut Travis and I decided to go for a skinny dip / wash in the outlet of the lake – you are not allowed to swim in the lake itself or even touch the water because the lake is sacred to local Māori. It also has the clearest natural freshwater in the world, comparable with filtered and bottled water. It was FREEZING! Later we read on a sign that the lake stays at 5-8 degrees C all year round – no wonder our feet hurt when we put them in the water. We had found a fairly secluded spot, but suddenly we looked up and there were two other people coming through the bushes, presumably looking for their own secluded spot. Travis made eye contact with them and confidently said “G’day!”, at which point they turned around. What are you supposed to say to someone who comes up on you while you are butt naked?

We had originally planned to have a rest day at Blue Lake Hut, and then walk across Waiau Pass the day after. However, there was some weather set to roll in the afternoon of the next day, so we decided to push on. We woke up and started a staggered leaving the hut around 5am (Zeean left at 5, I left at 5:30, the boys sometime after). Eventually, we all caught up with each other before heading up Waiau Pass. It was really just a steep sort-of-unstable scree slope most of the way up, but we made it to the top around 9am – it’s amazing the things you can do by 9am if you wake up early enough!

The way down was a steep challenging rock climb for a decent ways, but eventually we made it down to the river. Ethan once again left us to go climb yet another mountain. The rain we had expected to see at 1pm still had not materialized – instead, it was quite warm and sunny. We decided to see how far down the valley we could go – Waiau Hut was a ways down the valley and we had brought tents so we could camp whenever we needed to. So down the valley we went, mile after sweaty hot mile. Travis, at the behest of Isaac, tested out the depth of every pool in the river we came across, with his clothes and shoes on so as not to waste time between swimming and walking.

We eventually did make it to the hut, which was almost full already so we decided to camp outside. Ethan caught up to us not long after – we were unsure whether we would see him that day at all. We had dinner on the porch while being chewed alive by sandflies, and then crawled into bed around 7:30pm, which is about when the rain started. As I blew up my mat, which I had acquired for $5 from a leaving exchange student, part of the inside ripped, causing a bulge near where you blow air in, thereby deflating the rest of the mat. The more I blew, the more it ripped. Finally I just decided to rip up the entire inside and blow the mat up like a balloon, and then let some of the air out. This made for a comfortable mat if I laid perfectly flat on my back. Spoiler alert: I did not sleep perfectly flat on my mat, and so ended up half on Travis’s mat and half with no mat – not such a good sleep.

It rained on and off all night and the next day. Travis and I slept till around 8am, at which point we were woken up by Zeean announcing that Ethan and Isaac were thinking about walking to the next hut, and she was considering joining them. We got up and made breakfast, at which point I realized just how exhausted I was – I briefly considered the idea of walking to the next hut, at which point I started crying. Nope, it was a rest day for me.

After breakfast I went back to bed in the hut and read a magazine for a bit. Travis fried some wraps for lunch, and then Zeean and Travis went up the river to have a swim in the rain while I took a nap. That evening, we ate dinner and chatted with a girl from California staying in the hut who was walking the Te Araroa Trail, which runs the length of New Zealand.

The next morning the weather had cleared, and we headed to meet Ethan and Isaac at Lake Guyon Hut. We arrived around lunch time, and after lunch Ethan, Travis, and Isaac climbed a mountain while Zeean and I had a very busy afternoon of reading, lying in the sun, and swimming, and taking pictures.

The next day was our last one. Travis was pretty much out of food – his “she’ll be right” attitude and rapid consumption of his snacks had ended him up pretty hungry. We had one more pass to go over – Fowler’s Pass, and then we would head out to Hanmer Springs. After a lunch at the top of the pass – more meagre for some than others – Ethan and Travis decided to climb one more mountain before meeting us at the car. The rest of the party said it was alright, as long as we didn’t wait too long at the car! Zeean, Isaac, and I got to the car around 1:40. We sat down in the shade, glad to rest our legs, and looked up the hill, but there was no sign of Ethan and Travis.

So we waited. And waited. And realized how hot and sweaty and hungry we were. Finally, around 2:20, we decided that in 5 minutes we would put our bags in the car, and at 2:30 we would leave, and they could hitchhike back into town. At 2:23 they arrived, half-running down the hill, with no idea how close they had come to being left in the dust.

Zeean had booked us an AirBnB for the night, and we went there and showered off 6 days worth of dirt and sweat before going to a fancy restaurant for dinner and then to the Hanmer Hotpools afterwards, which felt divine on our sore legs and feet.

The next day, we drove back to Christchurch for a couple days of rest, recovery, and laundry. On the last day of 2024, Travis and I packed up our stuff and started our mission down to Rakiura / Stewart Island.

The drive to Invercargill, at the very bottom of the South Island, takes about 7 hours, so on the way down we divided it into 2 days. On the way down, we stopped in Oamaru, which is a really cute town on the coast, got some lunch, and went into a model train exhibit.

About an hour after we started driving, I realized I had left my puffer jacket hanging up on the wall of my room – not ideal to leave a layer when tramping. I had been looking at buying a new one for a while, but they’re often really expensive and I just hadn’t been able to justify it yet. Once we reached Dunedin, we went to a museum for a bit, and then we went to Macpac, one of the main outdoor stores in New Zealand. They were having some clearance sales, including on puffer jackets, and so I ended up buying one for $100 that had been marked down from $380. We also went to the grocery store for a bottle of sparkling wine – it was New Years Eve after all. Then we drove down to the Catlins, which is a pretty area down in the south of New Zealand. We had booked a spot at a campsite, and got tipsy on the sparkling wine while we set up camp and made dinner. By the time we were done eating dinner it was 10 and just getting dark, and we got in bed and managed to stay up till midnight – barely.

The next morning we got going fairly early and made our way down through the Catlins, with multiple small hikes to water falls, a stop at the petrified forest, and lunch at the southernmost point of the South Island of New Zealand. From there we headed down to Invercargill – we had a flight to Stewart Island to catch at 5!

In Invercargill, we made one more stop at the supermarket and a stop at the pharmacy to buy me an ankle brace – I had ended the last tramp with pain in my right foot and ankle that was stubbornly hanging on, and since we were about to walk for 10 days, I didn’t want to take any chances. We then went to the airport, repacked our stuff, and checked in our bags before driving my car to a residential neighborhood a couple kilometers away where we could park for free. At this point, Travis was stressing pretty hard about the weight of our bags and when we had to be there. I was not – if one thing all my traveling has given me, it’s a gauge of when I need to stress and when not. I knew they weren’t going to care if our bags were a couple of kilos over, and they didn’t even ask for identification to give us our boarding passes. When we got on the plane there were 8 people and a pilot, there was paint peeling off the plane, and we took off after a 30 second safety briefing. One thing I was not prepared for was how loud the plane was – Travis kindly lent me one of his noise canceling earbuds, and I plugged my other ear the entire 20 minute plane ride.

Once off the plane we checked into the backpackers, set up our tent, and went to freshen up a bit. While in the bathroom I had a horrifying realization. I had not seen my tramping clothes in any of my stuff that I had just unpacked. Indeed, when I went to double check, they were nowhere to be found. Luckily, most of the clothes I had with me were outdoor suitable, and I was able to make the necessary substitutions to end up with a suitable set of tramping clothes and hut clothes. I hate making mistakes, especially stupid ones. The clothes must have gotten left in the car in the rapid repacking that happened in the airport parking lot – I suspected Travis had accidentally packed them away and I didn’t catch it. Oh well, life went on. We got fish and chips that evening and ate them by the wharf – Stewart Island has the best fish and chips I have ever had because the cod is caught fresh just off the island. We dreamt about that fish and chips for the next 10 days.

The next morning we stopped by the Department of Conservation (DOC) office to get some information about the track and to store our extra clothes and tent in a locker. Talking to the lady was very helpful, and we learned about some sections of the track that were only crossable at low tide, as well as when low tide actually was. At 9am we caught a taxi to the beginning of the actual track, which was expensive but worth it, because I knew from when I had done the great walk with Anja two years ago that the walk from town to the beginning of the track was a terrible two hour slog on a paved road.

At 9:15 we took our “pre-Northwest Circuit” picture and headed off down the track. The great walk section was hilariously easy – walking it two years ago was so much more difficult, but I have learned a lot about tramping since then, including how to pack a lighter bag (although our bags were still around 17 kgs to start out with). I am also in much better shape, and have an inhaler so the hills don’t kill me anymore.

We ate lunch at the Port William Hut around 11:30, and cleared out as a big group of people came in. As soon as we started walking on the northwest circuit track, the difference in track maintenance was obvious. Within 5 minutes, my shoes were covered in mud, but it also felt like we were actually in a wild place now.

We arrived that afternoon at Bungaree Hut, which was already full of people. A family had boated in and was staying for a few days, and an American family of three was doing the circuit on the same timing we were but had stayed in Port William Hut last night. The sandflies were pretty vicious at the hut, so the evening was spent inside, or outside walking around. Just before bed around 9:30, we took a small walk down the track and saw a kiwi rustle the ferns! We unfortunately did not see the actual bird, but it was a good sign.

The next day, we walked from Bungaree Hut to Christmas Village Hut. There are two hunters huts on the way there, and we stopped and had lunch in the first one since it was raining. In fact, there are quite a lot of hunters huts on Stewart Island. DOC does not build or maintain them, instead they are maintained by independent clubs. There is a healthy population of white tailed deer on the island, and a smaller population of red deer. The populations are maintained for hunting, because it generates a lot of income for DOC – hunters are often wealthy people, as evidenced by the fact that we saw two hunters fly into a hunters hut with a helicopter a couple days later.

The other thing about hunters huts is that because people boat or fly into them, they often contain some supplies even when no one is staying there. Before reaching Christmas Village Hut, we went to pop into the hunters hut and found, among other things, an unopened can of beer. After umming and aahing for a bit, Travis decided to take it and drink it that night – it was evident there was no one staying there – and leave another beer in a hunters hut some other time.

From Christmas Village Hut, you can climb the tallest mountain on Stewart Island, Mt. Anglem / Hananui, at 980 meters tall. Travis was set on climbing this mountain, and originally, we had planned to take a whole day to climb it and stay in the hut for two nights. The American family was planning to do the same thing, so we decided this was our chance to get ahead of them and maybe have some huts to ourselves. That morning, Travis woke up at 5 and got up to go climb the mountain. I had slept horrendously that night and went back to sleep until eight, then got up, had a stretch, and went to go find some pāua, which is what abalone is called in New Zealand. You are allowed to collect and eat it, and I was determined to give it a try.

Travis got back around 10:45, just as I was frying up the pāua I had successfully pried off the rock and gutted. He immediately went to go charge his phone – he had turned it on to see if he had service on the mountain, and had gotten a concerning text he had half read before his phone had given up on life. A couple minutes later, he was able to read the texts, which said that Ethan had gone for a trip in the mountains and had fallen off a ridge, shattering his kneecap and fracturing his hip! He had set off his personal locator beacon and been rescued by helicopter, and was now in the hospital post-surgery recovering. It turned out there was service at the hut as well, so Travis gave Zeean a call, and was able to talk to both her and Ethan. It sounded like everything was under control. I know Ethan is going to love being homebound – this is sarcasm; he is one of the people I know who would most hate being cooped up and unable to move. Ah well, nothing we could do about it now.

After eating the pāua, which was in fact quite good, we packed up and started walking around noon. After an annoying set of up and down hills for 11km, we reached Yankee River Hut, and found we had it all to ourselves. After a wash in the river, where Travis got stung by two wasps on both calves, we had dinner and went to bed fairly early. We didn’t have too far to go the next day and had a nice sleep in, with no one to wake us up.

The next day, we walked to Long Harry Hut, which included a walk over some sand dunes and along Smoky Beach, with a hunters hut we had just seen the helicopter fly to. There was also a boat on the beach, with a group of people standing around it with beers in hand. As we came closer, it was evident that they were quite concerned. Once we reached it, we saw that the wheels were stuck in the sand, and the people told us they had tried to dig it out and other boats had come to try to pull it out, to no avail. I’m sure that was quite an expensive mistake to make.

After we got to Long Harry Hut, we had a wash in the river and then tried our hand at some fishing with the hook and line left in the hut. We were getting bites right away, but couldn’t get the hook to stay in the fish’s mouth. Because we were fishing on the rocks in the waves, the hook ended up getting stuck and we lost it, which I felt quite bad about.

That night we started getting serious about trying to see kiwis – it was evident the area was full of them – we were hearing them call at night, seeing footprints, feathers, and poo, and people in the hutbooks were saying they had seen plenty. We walked quietly along the track for a bit and heard one call, but alas, none to be seen.

The next morning, we headed off towards East Ruggedy Hut. This was the first day we had a section of the track we could only cross at low tide, which was around 11. It turned out to be a long rocky beach that we had to rock-hop across. We decided we wanted to look for some more pāua when we got on the beach, so we dropped our bags and headed towards an area where there were some big rocks that would protect us from the force of the incoming waves. Not only did we not find any pāua, but the rocks were quite slippery with algae, and getting into the area was much easier than getting out. On my way back to our packs, I slipped and hit my right knee quite badly. It really hurt on impact, but I could tell nothing was broken. We sat at the packs for a bit while I recovered a bit, and then made our way across the beach, not wanting to miss the low tide window. It hurt to bend my knee, and I figured out that I could keep it mostly straight and make my left knee do all the work if I stepped up with my right foot, and down with my left.

Travis ended up finding two pāua towards the end of the beach, and after lunch we headed up the hill. I was worried that my knee would cause me significant pain when walking uphill, but it turned out that the more I walked, the less it hurt. We took a small detour to an overlook that turned out to be a stunning view of East Ruggedy Beach and the Ruggedy Range, and then walked down across the sand dunes to the hut. There was no one there when we got there, so we spread our stuff all across the hut, had a wash, and fried up some pāua before we were joined by another guy traveling the circuit the other way and had to sheepishly make some room in the hut for him – we had spread out so much, both inside and outside that he said he thought there were six people staying here when he first walked up.

That evening we took another walk to the beach, which was actually quite far away, and walked quietly looking for kiwis. While we did hear some, all we saw was a possum.

The next day started out hot and muggy as we started walking to Big Hellfire Hut around 9am. When we got to the end of West Ruggedy Beach, however, it started to rain a little bit. I decided not to put my rain pants on – it would have meant taking off my boots and gators, and it was pretty warm anyway. Big mistake. The rain picked up in intensity, and by the time we had a very short lunch huddled near a big rock, my pants were wet from the knees down, and it just got worse from there. The water slowly crept its way up my legs and down into my boot, till the whole lower half of my body was wet, including my underwear. It felt like I had peed myself, and by that point I was absolutely miserable and hating life and tramping. As I got wetter I got colder, but was still walking so didn’t really feel it until it was too late, but it was too late by this point anyway. Travis seemed unbothered by the rain, having the double advantage of more insulation on his body and a higher tolerance for being wet and cold. Usually when we’re walking together, Travis lets me set the pace and walks behind me. I slowed down quite a lot as I got wetter and colder, and eventually going up a hill, he passed me, and that was the final straw. I started crying but pushed on, stumbling through the mud and getting stuck, with my legs wet and cold and my boots full of water.

Finally, we got to the hut. I couldn’t do anything besides take off my clothes and crawl into my sleeping bag, where instead of getting warm, I lay there freezing and crying for well over thirty minutes. Travis washed the muddy gators, hung up our wet clothes, started a fire, and made me some tea, and finally got in the sleeping bag with me, at which point I slowly started to warm up again and was able to stop crying. Eventually I was able to move and put on some more clothes and get myself something to eat, which helped a lot. I think I was dangerously close to getting hypothermia, perhaps had even started down that road. It felt really scary being unable to think logically and act to make myself warmer, or even to ask for help. It also served as a good lesson for both me and Travis about where my limits are and that they are much lower than his when it comes to being cold and wet. I learned that I need to be proactive about putting on rain pants, even if it is a hassle, and that sometimes just pushing on is not the best thing, especially if it means not stopping to eat and drink because I just don’t have the reserves to go for a long time without eating because I will run out of energy, especially if it’s cold.

The next day we had another 7 hour to walk to Mason’s Bay Hut, with a low tide pinch point in the last third. Low tide was around 1pm, and so we got started fairly early and followed a big ridge down to Little Hellfire Beach, where there was a hunter’s hut. It turned out that my pants had not dried at all overnight, so I decided to wear just the rain pants with no other pants underneath, which was in fact better than no rain pants. It was still raining a little bit that day, and, having learned our lesson from the day before, we stopped at the hunter’s hut for an early lunch. We were able to make some soup and tea and be sheltered for a bit before going up and over one more big hill to Mason’s Bay, where we would have to cross the pinch point and walk along the beach for ~4km.

As we went over the hill, we were hurrying along but having a good conversation, and it was raining a little bit. Suddenly I almost walked onto a kiwi on the path! It took a couple steps into a nearby bush, and then stayed there and continued probing the soil for worms and other delicious things. Finally, it came out of the bush, less than a meter from where Travis and I were standing! It continued unbothered, coming closer and closer to me. Then it poked it’s bill at my shoe, realized it was a foreign texture, gave it’s bill a little shake, and wandered off into the undergrowth on the other side of the path. I looked back to see tears in Travis’s eyes. It was truly a special encounter, seeing a kiwi in broad daylight so close and unbothered by our presence in its natural habitat. They really are such odd birds, with feathers that look almost like fur, bones that are filled with marrow like ours are instead of being hollow like those of most birds, and nostrils at the end of their bills instead of at the top. It’s no wonder they’re so rare everywhere except for Stewart Island – it looked like it had no concept of what a predator could be and that it should worry about us as a threat.

Still filled with awe, we headed down to Mason’s Bay and picked our way across another beach filled with slippery rocks before passing by a rocky outcrop that was obviously the pinch point – in an hour, it would have been unpassable. We then walked for what felt like ages along the flat sand beach with the wind buffeting our backs (thank goodness not our faces), before turning and walking inland along Duck Creek towards Mason’s Bay Hut.

Mason’s Bay Hut is a large 20 bunk hut, and people often fly in and land on the beach to stay in the hut, so we were expecting there to be others. Miraculously, the hut was completely empty, and we lit a fire and dragged mats into the living room to sleep on the floor next to the fire. We slept for a good 12 hours that night, exhausted by the previous 7 days of walking.

The next day we had a rest day, and after a leisurely morning and incredibly late breakfast, we set about exploring some of the area around the hut. There was a historic homestead, because people had tried to raise sheep in the area for almost 100 years – from the stories on the signs, it sounded like a very difficult life. There were also two hunter’s huts that needed to be checked out, and Travis went and climbed the tallest nearby mountain, called Big Sandhill. In fact, this area is one of the largest sand dune systems in New Zealand. Sand dunes are special because they are constantly shifting and moving, so the plants that live on them are specially adapted for that constant change. It makes them hard for people to live in and build structures on, and so during the time the area was farmed, marram grass was planted on the dunes to stabilize them. It did it’s job incredibly well, nearly destroying the fragile unstable system in the process. However, DOC and the University of Otago have been working on removing the marram grass and restoring the dunes for over 20 years, and have seen huge successes.

That afternoon, two big families flew in on planes, and very quickly the hut was full. We escaped for a bit by going to look at the other hunter’s hut, but enjoyed chatting with a couple people during dinner. When one family pulled out fresh bread and cheese and tomatoes, however, I decided I’d had enough – there is only so much taunting one can take after 8 days of dehydrated meals and canned fish. We went to bed early, having walked ~10km that day, and I slept well in the full bunk room, although Travis was driven insane by the snoring from the dads and uncles in the room.

The next day, we got going early, intent on getting a bunk in the smaller Freshwater Hut we were all headed to. To get there, we had to walk 15km across one of New Zealand’s largest undisturbed wetlands, a walk which was completely flat and had long stretches of boardwalk (but still contained some impressive mud pits). It started raining a little bit (I stopped and put on my rain pants, lesson learned), but it was kind of magical walking in the rain – the spider webs on the long grass were full of dew, and a couple Stewart Island Robins even stopped to say hello.

We arrived at Freshwater Hut around 11:30, claimed our bunks, and had a nice lunch before heading up Rocky Mountain in the afternoon. We left around 1, just as the family arrived. On our way up the mountain, there were a series of what looked like shrines, with sticks and feathers and moss and a piece of meat on a stick in the center. How odd. One of them had a little metal plate tucked in among the moss. “It’s a trap!” said Travis. “What, no way,” I said, and pushed the end of my walking stick onto the metal plate. SNAP went the trap, catching the end of my stick in a pair of jaws that would have snapped my leg if I were a cat stepping on it, which is indeed what they are set up to catch. At the top of the mountain, we met the DOC employee who was setting up the traps to clear the area of cats and other predators. Sometimes, there are endangered dotterels nesting at the top of the mountain, and they are doing what they can to protect them. It seems like there are none there this year though, and they have constricted their range to only a single other mountain on Stewart Island. The weather had cleared up, and we were rewarded with some stunning views of the island – we were able to see the Ruggedy Range, and the big wetland we had come over, and Mason’s Bay. We lazed around for a while up on the mountain before finally heading back to the (very busy) hut for dinner and an early bedtime.

The next morning, we woke up at 5am, packed up, and left by 6am. We were intent on getting back to Oban around 4pm, because the DOC office closed at 4:30 and we wanted to get our clean clothes for the evening. It was our longest day yet, with 23km to go, but half of it was on the great walk track so would be some easier walking. Walking down the track at 6:15 we caught a glimpse of 2 kiwi chasing each other in the bushes! One last sighting before the trip was over. After going up and over a big hill, we reached North Arm Hut around 11, an hour ahead of schedule. We had lunch in the hut -both of our food supplies were now empty save for a few snacks – and then set out on the great walk section. It was raining a little bit, but the great walk was easy walking and we sped along. We reached the end of the great walk section in under 3 hours (it said 4.5 hours on the sign), and then made it to town by 3:15ish. We picked up our clean clothes, dragged ourselves to the backpackers where we had booked a room, and took our first proper showers in 10 days (my shower was longer than the 5 minutes recommended by the backpackers – sorry not sorry). Clean and dry, we headed over to the little grocery store to buy some ice cream. In the store, we were bombarded by the sheer overwhelming amount of choices, and reminded how expensive everything is – we settled on a tub of yogurt and some fresh fruit, which we inhaled by the wharf before going to the pub for some beer, since we had some time to kill before the fish and chips shop opened at 5pm. We had been dreaming of these fish and chips with increasing intensity for the last 10 days, and we stuffed ourselves with more grease than we’d eaten in the last 10 days combined before heading back to the room for some laziness and a 7pm bedtime – well deserved.

The next morning, we had breakfast at a cafe across the street before heading to the airport down the street (Oban is not very big). After a quick flight back to Invercargill we walked to my car (which was still there thank goodness), went to the grocery store for second breakfast and lunch, and then drove to Dunedin, where we had an incredibly delicious lunch in the botanic gardens. From there we drove up the coast towards Christchurch, taking a quick stop at the Moeraki Boulders and in Ashburton for some groceries to last us through the next day.

Now, in New Zealand the maximum speed limit is 100kmh (62mph). In many of the town, the highway goes right through the middle of town, where the speed limit is 50kmh (31mph), which feels incredibly slow, especially when the road remains straight and wide. I have a bad tendency to drive too fast in the towns – most times, I feel like speed limits are set to what makes sense, and so I drive what feels right, which is usually pretty good. But on the highway in these towns my scale is off because I’ve been driving really fast, and the road is open and straight, so I drive too fast and have to be reminded to slow down or am able to catch myself – usually. We had driven 7 hours already that day, and I was tired and just wanted to be home, so as I pulled out of the grocery store, however, I sped up to what felt right – there was also no sign because we were in the middle of town – and got pulled over for going 75kmh (46mph) in a 50kmh zone. This was my first ever speeding ticket – it was delivered swiftly and well deserved, but I was still pretty upset at myself for making yet another stupid mistake.

Speaking of stupid mistakes – when I got home that evening, what should greet me as I walked into my room but my puffer jacket, hanging up on the wall, and the bag with my tramping clothes, hanging neatly on my desk chair. Apologies to Travis for suspecting him in having a role in me forgetting my clothes – it was all me.

And so it was all over and back to real life – working on my paper, searching for a job, going to capoeira – the good and the bad. I feel so lucky to have been able to do two incredible back to back trips and seen so many amazing things in such a short amount of time. I also feel lucky to call Travis my partner – when you can spend more than three weeks consecutively with someone and not grow tired of them, especially across some challenging experiences, it shows you’ve really found someone special.

That’s all for now – hopefully by the next update I will have found a second job and be working!