South Island

This morning saw an early start for us as we hopped on the ferry for the South Island which appears to be a huge outdoor playground for grown-ups. We ploughed the megabus through some beautiful countryside (like England but bigger and nicer and without the chavs) and despite heading south (it's all backwards down here) we also seemed to be heading into the glorious weather so big smiles all round.

We drove straight to the start of our chosen 'Great Walk' - the Heaphy Track - and (oh the glory of the campervan) cooked a bit of monkfish with olive tapenade and sweet potato mash, showered and slept peacefully in real beds - in a car park at the trailhead! Supercool.

With slight trepidation we parted ways with the superbus for a few days and headed off into the wilderness. The Heaphy Track is a 4-6 day 'tramp' and needless to say we were planning to get it done in 4 days. It being winter here we were obviously expecting to be rained on for the entire walk but fortune smiles on the brave (us) and we basically had glorious sunshine for the whole walk.

A small summary of the walk in words and photos is laid out below:

Day 1: The walk began with all the up hill on one day which we were a bit frightened of but which was really quite gentle. We covered just under 20km mostly through forest and got VERY excited when we saw what we briefly thought was a Kiwi but soon realised it was a boring old Weka.

We finished the day at Perry Saddle hut on the saddle (ha) of a hill. The huts are quite basic but have wood/coal-fired stoves for heating and gas hobs for cooking. We managed to bagsy one of the bunk-bedded rooms for just us and slept in a row of love on the top bunk. Before bed we listened to the call of the Kiwi (real this time) on the deck.

Day 2: A big day today with 27km to cover but in much more open countryside across the downs. A bit of up and down and a few very precarious swing bridges but quite manageable and we saw some endangered blue duck.

We finished the day at Mackay Hut which was rather chilly but had a beautiful view and we had it all to ourselves!

Day 3: 21km day in a mixture of bush and 'cabbage tree' (yukka) and palm tree forest which we dispatched quite quickly. We spent our final night at the beautiful Heaphy Hut where the Heaphy river meets the Tasman sea and where we saw some shags (hehe) and watched one of the most spectacular sunsets of the entire megatrip.

Day 4: The last day was only about 16km but was the highlight of the whole walk along breathtakingly beautiful coastline. We finished the hike around lunchtime and then took a small 20 minute flight* back to the start of the trail to collect the megabus. Beeeeeautiful.

*Separate blog entry required to do justice to this event