9 Days of Hiking

Not much time for internet on the road here, but we are finally back into civilization for a bit after 9 consecutive days of hiking.  It all started off in Mt. Aspiring national park outside Wanaka with a day trip to the Rob Roy glacier and then up the valley to get a glimpse of some huge mountains.  That was a full on 17 mile day, expecting to do a little hike out of Queenstown the following day.

a Kea!  "hmmm... can i eat your camera?"

So we get to DOC (department of conservation) in Queenstown at 9am the following day, to find out that there is some good weather for the next couple days before getting some more rain.  Well, gotta take advantage!  Plan a trip, get food, organize transportatin, get to the trail, pack up our stuff, and by 2pm we were on the trail on the Routeburn Track.  This is a 2-3 day Great Walk.  Since the end of the walk is about 300km (by car - crazy mountains) away from where you park your car, we decided to do the Caples track to get back closer to the van.  The Caples is another 2-3 day track but is not a great walk.  It comes out only about 40km from the start of the Routeburn.  Good thing we had previously organized that on the start day we had someone follow us to the end of the Caples track, dropped off our van, and then got a ride to the start of the Routeburn.

On the Caples everything was so green!

Then the day we finished the Caples we go back to DOC in Queenstown to find out that there is a couple more days of good weather before more rain is on its way.  Kepler track!  We go crazy again resupplying and making our way to Te Anau which is where the Kepler track is.  This is another Great walk that is generally 4 days.  Totally amazing scenery on all of these.  On the first night of this one we stayed in the Luxmore hut, which happens to be right near some caves.  It is sweet that anyone can go in and explore them.  It was defnintely quite the changeup of scenery.  Then on the third day, we knew it was supposed to rain later and the following day, and after 9 days without a shower, we decided that the 10 miles to the next hut was not enough and so we kept on another 5 miles or so to get to a road and then hitchhike the last few miles back to the van.  I also had a cold throughout the entire Kepler track, so i was okay not hiking through 5 more miles of beech forest next to a huge river (which is something that we have done quite a bit of in these 9 days)

Sweet mountains on the Kepler track

So yea, great walks are really cool in the scenery that you s ee, but they are really like great (side)walks.  The trails are all graded and dont go too steep and are really easy.  This was quite unexpected compared to many of the other trails we'd hiked so far.  The Caples was interesting in that we went  through boggy areas and up steeper stuff and had unbridges stream crossings and interesting things like that.  All 3 tracks were really amazing, and it was also awesome to have a hut with a wood burning stove at the end of each day.  Surprisingly there was about 10-40 people in each hut we stayed in, so it was cool to have some company.

Livin' large in the huts.

There has been so much amazing stuff we've seen, but i dont get too much internet time and I dont feel like writing about all of it... But, you can check out the pictures!
Mt. Aspiring day walk
Routeburn and Caples
Kepler
Okay, and off to Milford Sound for a few days of actual relaxation!