christchurch - our new home?

hello out there! hope you all had a fantastic christmas, especially those of you who were fortunate to have snow on the ground - how perfect!

my dad arrived safely on christmas eve and we had a quiet (but lovely) christmas in the motel, complete with handmade decorations that i made bryan get up early to finish. he's a good one. it was strange to miss most of the lead-up to the christmas season, being far away from commercials and christmas songs and window displays, and i was disconcerted to find myself almost comforted by the experience of a bustling mall when we arrived in the city during the peak of holiday shopping. after discovering many exciting surprises in our christmas stockings (so thoughtfully decorated and sent over by my mom), we drove east to the old french town of akaroa on the banks peninsula a few hours east of christchurch via some steep and windy roads. nothing was open, but it was a lovely drive and kept us away from the mountains of christmas chocolate for a little while.

yesterday we made another excursion, this time to mount sunday, best known as the town of edoras in rohan for my fellow lord of the rings fans. it's definitely off the beaten path, but there were quite a few cars on the gravel road so i suppose we're not the only cheesy tourists around. it's obviously peak tourism season, as the motels and backpackers are consistently slipping the "no" sign in front of "vacancy" and the roads are crowded with campervans and hitchhikers. we'd planned to take the bus up to nelson today, but the nakedbus was full so we opted to take the scenic train ride to greymouth and the bus from greymouth to nelson, making for a 10-hour day of traveling. tomorrow we'll hop on a shuttle bus for a short 90-minute drive to nelson lakes national park, where we'll head into the wilderness for about a week and see what adventures await us there.

-rachel

otago central rail trail

hey all! merry christmas! we're currently chilling for a few days in dunedin, a scottish city on the bottom of the east coast, home to new zealand's oldest university and the world's steepest streets. it's also got the cadbury factory, where we took a factory tour yesterday and scored some fantastic free samples. two days ago we finished up the otago central rail trail with a 2-hour scenic train ride into the city, a fitting conclusion for our historic and much-enjoyed long walk. if you've got time, i'd love to tell you more about it...

mon, dec 14

clyde to alexandra, 5 miles

we got started on the rail trail at 4:30 this afternoon, having spent the day bumping around on buses and drinking starbucks in queenstown. though we've only gotten as far as the first town, i already love this trail, a flat gravel path that stretches for 93 miles across the plains of central otago, a region known for its long-ago gold rush days, dry weather, farmland, and fruit growing. the rail trail was opened in 2001 by DOC, the land having been purchased in 1993 after the railway went bust in 1990, and is primarily used by cyclists, so we're certainly in the minority being on foot. because we're hopping on a train at the end of the track, and because this train only runs on fridays and sundays, we're squeezing what would most comfortably be a 7- or 8-day walk into a 5-day trip, keeping in the back of our minds the option to rent bikes at a stop along the way if we need a change of pace.

tues, dec 15

alexandra to omakau, 18 miles

from the reaction we're getting from cyclists, along with our own lack of encounters with other walkers, we seem to be the only people on earth who would dare not bring a bike along on the rail trail. i can certainly see the appeal of a set of wheels, as this is just the first of a series of long days on the flattest imaginable surface (the railroad was not allowed to exceed a 1:50 gradient) that extends in a straight line, often apparently interminably. DOC does an excellent job of providing information panels about the history of the region and the railway; there's even a guidebook that i wanted to have but was too cheap to buy. what they don't do so well, in classic DOC fashion, is mathematics. the distances between stations vary from brochure to trail sign, and then from trail sign to trail sign; in many places there are three variations to choose from. if we have yet to hike the section in question, we choose the smallest distance; if we have already completed it, we count the largest :)

most of the land we're passing through is inhabited by sheep, deer, cows, or horses; outside of one or two vineyards spotted on our first short day, there doesn't appear to be any fruit grown here after all. in northland, a prime spot for oranges, at the end of many driveways would be a chair or old bookcase holding bags fo fruit and a donation box, a passive but possibly effective way to get rid of a surplus. we very nearly contributed $2 to one such roadside stand for a custard apple, but balked at the last moment, our curiosity being ultimately outweighed by the strangeness of the item, which in appearance had more in common with an artichoke than an apple.

wed, dec 16

omakau to oturehua, 18.25 miles

i make an effort not to start counting down the remaining miles until after lunchtime, but sometimes i just can't help it. instead of making a long walk more tolerable, it keeps me from finding distraction in my surroundings and leads to some discouraging "surely we've walked farther than that..." moments. but while the day was long, it wasn't at all uninteresting - the highlight being two flashlight-required walks through old railway tunnels, emerging to beautiful views of a deep gorge and a crossing of a high viaduct. we're also appreciating the dry and hot weather that results from being, for once, on the eastern side of the mountains - a welcome change for us, but not so for the locals, who are suffering through the early stages of drought.

we accidentally chased a poor sheep down the trail for the last mile of the day; it had (not uncharacteristically) wriggled out of its pen and didn't have time to squeeze back in by the time it spotted us. as the trail at this point is bounded on both sides by fences, it trotted along ahead of us for quite a while, occasionally darting into the tall grass alongside the trail to check another section of fence and even desperately head-butting a closed gate before finally escaping. in oturehua we stopped at gilchrist's general store, the oldest continuously operating store in new zealand, and arrived at the backpackers still nibbling at our ice cream bars. best $3 we've ever spent.

thu, dec 17

oturehua to waipiata, 21.5 miles

new longest distance for the harmons, 21.5 miles, edging out our previous high of 20.5. this day was another hot one, adding to my strange finger-imprinted sunburn collection despite (because of?) three sunscreen applications. we restocked our food supply in ranfurly, known as a hub for rural art deco architecture, where we wished we could stop for a break at the historic centennial milk bar. i'm unfamiliar with the idea of a milk bar, and am more than a little curious - could a person successfully order a glass of 2% strawberry goat's milk there? probably not...

at our campsite, an "informal camping area" right off the trail, the remains of a blue tent are mysteriously lying just over the fence behind the latrine. who abandons their tent on the trail? even if the weather was acting up and you decided to bail in favor of the b&b up the road, wouldn't you return the next morning to retrieve it? i just finished a swedish book where a couple is murdered while camping in a tent (like ours, also blue), so i may be prone to over-dramatize anything out of the ordinary that involves blue nylon...

fri, dec 18

waipiata to hyde, 14.25 miles

the big story today is the violent wind, which made us grateful that we'd planned such a short day today. a woman on a bike was pushed off the trail by an especially strong gust just outside the small ganger's shed in which we were eating lunch; we watched her climb back up the bank, bloodied up a bit and much more cautious. from then on, she walked the bike through the exposed sections, where bryan and i held hands to keep each other on the trail, affecting a silly hop-run resulting from the bullying wind making every effort to buckle our knees. the worst was the sandblasting of our arms and faces when the wind picked up bits of gravel and offered us a natural exfoliating treatment. from time to time we caught sight of how goofy we looked, and our anger was interrupted with fits of giggles at this ridiculous and unexpected experience.

we didn't have a reservation for a room in hyde, which generally isn't a problem but the hotel that we stopped in seemed really flustered by our unexpected arrival. they did have a room left in the bunkhouse, very expensive for its size but mercifully sheltered (mostly) from the wind, so we gratefully took it anyway. i returned from a long, hot shower to find the weather still unabated; my raincoat, which had been hanging on a hook in the bedroom, had blown out of the open window and was now making its way down towards the road.

sat, dec 19

hyde to middlemarch, 17 miles

we finished off the last of the 93(ish) miles early this afternoon, arriving at the small station in middlemarch where tomorrow we'll board the taieri gorge railway to dunedin for a few days of touristy exploration. this has been our longest trail so far, as other weeklong trips have consisted of stringing together two or more small trails, and the historic focus and change of scenery has made the rail trail a good choice for our second-to-last trip before settling down for a while to work. i do wish, however, that the longest straight stretch of this taril hadn't been reserved for the final 4 miles - it's cruel to be able to see our destination continuously from so far away and yet not seem to make any progress towards it.

on these flat expanses that require little mental exertion, i've been aware of the thoughts that meander through my mind during an 8-hour day on the trail. far from the disciplined theological debates or progress towards career decisions that i'd expected to result from unlimited thinking time, the brain instead chooses to squander its resources on trivial matters of zero consequence: remembering a forgotten word in a song that i know rhymes with "pathetic" (prophetic), finding an actor whose first and last names both start with "E" (emilio estevez), wondering just how bad the word "bloody" actually is. maybe it's time to go back to school...

-rachel

pictures:

1) view through an old traffic light (do you still call it that on a railroad?)
2) arriving at what was once lauder station

3) bryan's new deer friends. looks like a family photo.

4) looking over the manuherikia river from one of many bridges

bryan took all but the first one - he did a stellar job as photographer, don't you think?

mavora walkway

these last few days have been kind of a bust due to the unceasing rain, so i'll try to give a fairly brief recounting of our short walk (if i'm capable of doing so). i also recognize that it's christmastime and most of you have better things to do than keep up with this blog.

oh, and the pictures this time don't have anything to do with the text - i'm just uploading old ones from our road trip down the west coast. first one is of bryan taking a picture at arthur's pass national park, second one is me with the guided tour at fox glacier, the third is an incredible sunset at the "ithilien" campground , and the fourth is a "senior portrait" that bryan posed for at some ruins that we found on a short walk just outside of queenstown.

wed, dec 9
queenstown to mid caples hut, 4 miles?

this little trip is not starting off well. we nearly missed the bus/got in a fight with the bus driver, who failed to announce our destination when loading the bus and then snapped "you're late" at us when another employee rushed us to the departing vehicle. i rarely see bryan so riled up - it's fun to watch :) it's raining today, as it has been for the last two days, and our clothes are still a bit damp from the laundry since we hopefully hung them on the line for a full day before giving in to the dryer. to make things more uncomfortable, i've developed a minor irritation in my left eye that makes me look like some sort of red-eyed mutant and requires that i wear my glasses for a few days. glasses and hiking in the rain don't mix well - the glasses tend to fog up at the first sign of body heat - so i blindly led the way across sodden pastures and riverside forest tracks without the aid of my spectacles.

these first two days of our five-day hike were supposed to be along the caples track, which forms half of a loop with last week's greenstone track, but because of the weather we've decided to hike just a short ways along the caples track today and then backtrack tomorrow to avoid the overflowing streams. it's amazing how quickly the streams and rivers rise to dangerous levels, and also how quickly they drop once the rain has stopped. along the track we saw (and smelled) three dead cows, which we learned from the hut warden had drowned a few days ago in another storm.

burned a hold in my sock by stupidly "drying" it on top of a wood stove while in use, which i'm both embarrassed about and a little amused by. as you can see, i still have plenty of things to learn.

thurs, dec 10

mid caples hut to greenstone hut, 15 miles?

bryan and i decided to split up at the convergence of the caples and greenstone tracks, as i wanted to add a 2-3 hour detour that he wasn't particularly interested in. we set our "if i'm not at the hut by..." emergency deadlines, redistributed lunch, and both happily started down our respective trails just before 11. i'm very glad that i chose to check out the lake rere loop, as it winds back to lake wakatipu which otherwise is only seen on the way to the track, and also passes by a small sub-alpine lake where i took a long break in the sun and pulled out a book that i've been working on since we arrived in new zealand. also, skipping this track would have meant hiking exclusively on trails that i've already experienced, which is hard to get excited about. i made my way to greenstone hut (our favorite!) with plenty of time to spare, and we spent the evening talking with a guy from atlanta who has a nightmarish story about his deportation from russia while with the peace corps.

fri, dec 11

greenstone hut to careys hut, 17 miles

this was one of our longest days on the trail in a while, reminiscent of our crazy days on the te araroa a few months ago when we put in the long hours out of necessity, having no places in between to set up the tent. today we passed two huts before settling in at the six-bed careys hut; we had originally planned to stay here tomorrow night instead of tonight but with another bout of rain coming in on our heels we opted to get as far as possible today. this track, the mavora walkway (actually part of the te araroa) is extremely boggy in many places and isn't very well signed, so while the scenery was lovely, this isn't going down in history as our favorite walk ever. this hut won't be winning any medals either, quaint as it is, as the hut book entries keep mentioning mice and every surface is covered with dead blowflies, who occasionally revive themselves long enough to skitter around upside-down on the windowsill, much like wind-up toys.

sat, dec 12

careys hut to te anau, 8 miles?

when the alarm went off at 7 this morning, barely audible over the temper tantrum that the sky seemed to be throwing, bryan, already knowing the answer, asked, "do you want me to reset it for an hour from now and see if the rain has stopped by then?" of course i did, but the rain paused for just a brief window, so we were quickly drenched anyway. after two hours we reached a point where the track splits, giving us the option of taking a more direct route to kiwi burn hut along a gravel road or the longer but likely more scenic trail to the hut along a lake. we opted for the first choice, but in the end didn't make it to the hut after all, giving in to an offer of a ride down to the highway with a couple running support services for "the big walk", a fundraising effort for a community youth program that involves two groups walking the te araroa from opposite ends and meeting in the middle in february. they dropped us off a good 30 miles south of town, but we quickly found another ride with a young british couple and their 1-year-old daugher, who seemed to take well to the travelling lifestyle. when we have kids, i want to retain my sense of adventure like this adorable family.

te anau's a cute town, so what was supposed to be just an overnight stop turned into two days of sightseeing, coffee drinking, and movie watching - much better than walking in the rain!

-rachel

rees-dart track

fri, dec 4 (happy birthday, grandpa!)
glenorchy to shelter rock hut, 13.5 miles

were it not for the american guy who picked us up outside of town, we'd still be walking the 12 miles to the start of the rees-dart track. while he couldn't get us all the way there, as the road fords some deep streams, we were grateful to have our pre-hike walking trimmed down to just an hour. on the turnoff to the access road we spotted two large yellow arrows pointing our direction and desperately hoped it didn't mean that we'd be joined by the rowdy bunch of middle-schoolers who'd been hitting our tent with their soccer ball all night. fortunately for us, that wasn't the case at all; instead, one of our secret hopes had been realized: we'd stumbled upon a film crew. a kiwi bloke on a 4x4 explained that they were shooting scenes for a movie called tracker (starring ray winstone, which bryan's stoked about), seeming to apologize for their intrusion into our "remote" tramping experience. we so-very-graciously accepted his apology, trying to look casual, as if we regularly come into contact with actors' trailers parked on the trail.

all in all, it took us a little over 7 hours to reach the hut today, passing through miles of valley marshlands, beech forest, and, at higher elevations, avalanche gullies. all morning we kept our eyes on mt earnslaw across the valley, waiting to see the obvious line of snow accumulation collapse and rush downhill, but all we saw was a tiny tremor that had stilled by the time its brief rumble could be heard.

sat, dec 5

shelter rock hut to dart hut, 5.5 miles

we didn't cover much ground today, just over 5 miles in a 5 hour period, a testament to the difficulty of terrain that we encountered. the 4-day track is pretty straightforward: 500-1000m, hut; 1000m-1500m-1000m, hut; 1000m-500m, hut. this morning, we set out to tackle the highest part of the track, a 500m scramble up and down gullies to the rees saddle. just two days ago the ice axe and crampon requirement was lifted by the DOC (this should have clued us in), but we still didn't expect to face anything as scary as the final 150m climb up the crazy steep slope to the saddle. snow still clung to the slopes, disguising the shape of the mountainside and causing some frightening (this is actually quite an understatement; i nearly hyperventilated) slips through the wet and muddy grass. this wasn't a hike but a full-on scramble, all limbs engaged, our bodies pressed flat against the slope to keep our heavy packs from pulling us backwards and causing what could easily have been a fatal tumble. i'm officially reverting to my original philosophy that mountaineering is only for the crazy, and i am not one of them.

when we mentioned our harrowing experience to the hut warden whom we encounted on the trail an hour later, he responded to our comment that it was "scary" with a casual and almost insulting "how so?"; we later found our from other hikers in the evening that they'd had the same experience. if we are total wusses, at least we're not alone.

read some of tom clancy's patriot games in the hut (slim pickings at the last book exchange) and learned that popular authors don't even have to be decent writers as long as they throw in words like "counterintelligence" and "electronic detonator" every few pages. terrible book, but i'm sure i'll finish it anyway - i'm that desperate.

sun, dec 6

dart hut to daleys flat hut, 9 miles

i wouldn't shed a single tear if i never had to see another gully for the rest of my life. the problem with topo maps and elevation charts, as helpful as they are, is that they don't operate on a small enough scale to be of any assistance to me between point A and point B. with topo lines indicating elevation only every 20m (approx. 60 ft), i'm constantly discovering ascents and descents that leave me huffing and puffing but don't even feature on the map because they total, say, only 18m of elevation change. i could essentially climb up and down the stairs of a 5-story building and not see any of my effort reflected on the map - and that's what i felt like we were doing all day. i'm exaggerating, of course, but it was a fairly bland day of walking in the rain so i've got to play it up somehow. spent a slow-moving evening reading the hut book, which all hikers are required to sign in case they go missing, as this helps search and rescue teams identify where the person last turned up. we generally spot a few other minnesotans that have passed through during the last year, though you can find entries representing outdoor enthusiasts from nearly every state and country.

mon, dec 7
daleys flat hut to queenstown, 8 miles

we finished off the last 8 miles of the rees-dart by lunchtime, meeting up at the shelter one last time with the other 4 hikers who've been following the same route since shelter rock hut and whose company we've enjoyed in the huts each evening. this track being more difficult than the last two, it draws more serious hikers from whom we've learned much.

tonight we're back in QT to do the usual: restock, shower, laundry, internet, and plan the week ahead. as soon as we finalize our route for the next 5 days, we'll have our last month of tramping planned out and will have to start looking ahead to finding work, which doesn't seem like nearly as much fun. already we're realizing that we may never get to see some parts of the country - apparently a year isn't really limitless time. on the plus side, these last few months having gone by so quickly means that my dad will arrive in just over two weeks to spend christmas with us in christchurch and test his backpacking abilities in the southern alps. i vividly remember arriving at the crappy hostel in auckland, despairingly telling ourselves that we just needed to hold out long enough for my dad to visit, and then we could go home if we still wanted to. i'm glad things have changed on that front. our greatest fear is that he'll arrive in shape (as usual) and show us up on the trail, so we've been pushing ourselves a bit harder than normal to minimize this potential embarrassment :)

-rachel

pictures:

1) drying off the socks at lunchtime after crossing 25 mile creek
2) bryan's lion king pose in the rees valley
3) looking up towards rees saddle

4) the shelter at chinaman's bluff - the end of 8 great days of tramping!]

PS - more pictures up on our photobucket page.

greenstone & routeburn tracks

happy december! i'm going to post this latest update in two sections, for those of you who don't have an hour to devote to reading about our travels :)

mon, nov 30
queenstown to greenstone hut, 7.5 miles

we took a shuttle from queenstown to the start of our track (we're combining two short tracks), which included a bit of an impromptu lord of the rings tour, as we were the only two in the van with a driver who worked on the movies and also runs commercial tours to the filming sites. when asked if they see many hardcore "ringers" on the tour, he relayed a story of a german woman, apparently bordering on viggo mortensen stalker status, who began crying at one of the sites and who came attired in her own "regalia" (his words, indicating at least the standard hobbit cloak and perhaps more).
another addition to the shuttle service today is that it involved a crossing of lake wakatipu by boat, normally not part of the plan but included this time because of a problem with the company's bus. we joined a guided tour group for this portion of the trip, about 10 hikers of various ages who'll hike the same route as us but pay 5-10 times more for the pleasure of staying in lodges with hot showers and meals, thus carrying much smaller packs. apparently, according to our driver, some of them don't realize that you can easily navigate these tracks on your own. hope it's worth it to them.
we only walked for 3.5 hours today, bringing us to the luxurious greenstone hut where the incredible sunset over the mountains lured even the hut warden outside to take photos. the walking was easy, with breathtaking glimpses of the turquoise greenstone river, so we're feeling pretty good about this track so far.

tues, dec 1
greenstone hut to mckellar hut, 9 miles

if we'd known what chaos awaited us at the mckellar hut tonight, we might not have been able to make ourselves move from quiet greenstone hut this morning. but, being ignorant, we trekked down through the boggy valley, which, being surrounded by high mountains on our left and right, gave us the impression that we were being squeezed through a giant intestine. i won't take this illustration any further, but i will say that we are feeling the discomfort of being bottled up with about 20 others in a hut built for 16. being the only ones with a tent, it's expected that we volunteer to sleep outside, no matter the fact that we were among the first to arrive and were already installed on one of the lower bunks. to aggravate this irritation further, a horde of sandflies attacked while we were setting up camp, inviting themselves into the tent where they now lie dead on the floor and remain smashed into the mesh canopy. i know that i don't really have the right to complain about this common hiking experience, but we were really looking forward to sleeping in huts the first two nights, as our next two will be at campsites. bummer.

wed, dec 2
mckellar hut to mackenzie camp, 9 miles

we made a lazy start today, being the last to leave the hut, though in our defense we did have to sweep up after the people who actually got to sleep inside. early on in the day we completed the greenstone track, which meets up with the routeburn (a great walk) at howden hut, where we devoured our peanut butter sandwiches and got the latest track updates from another american couple also using the hut as a lunch spot. apparently there's an avalanche-prone section near the saddle that's caused the DOC to require a guided crossing, so all trampers have to meet at a certain time to be led across in a bunch. this couple's opinion, which we heard echoed many times throughout the day, is that the DOC is being extremely cautious and the guided crossing isn't really necessary. there have also been rumors that the saddle opened back up this afternoon, so i guess we'll see when we get there. either way, we're luckier than last week's hikers, who could only cross that portion of the track by paying $55 each for a 45-second helicopter ride across the affected area. yikes. we left howden hut at about the same time as a frantic german guy with a baguette strapped to his pack who was stopping every hiker from the opposite direction to ask about the saddle before scurrying on up the hill. later, we learned that he had foolishly planned to hike all of the 20-mile track today and hurry back into town for a 10:30 am flight back to europe tomorrow, leaving himself no buffer for a delay like this one.
only 3 hours of our day were spent on the routeburn, but already we like what we see. with so much promotion of the great walks it's rare to be surprised by an exceptional vista; usually we find ourselves thinking "this looks familiar", even if it is worth seeing in person. on this part of the track, however, we felt as if we'd stumbled upon a secret treasure at earland falls, where the track skirts the pool at the base of the powerful waterfall, close enough to soak us pretty thoroughly with the spraying mist. then, upon reaching our campsite, we took the side track marked "split rock --> 25 min return" which took us to a gigantic boulder that's been split in two, the path between the halves just wide enough to walk through but not a place i'd want to be during an earthquake. tomorrow we should rack up twice the mileage on the routeburn - does it follow that we'll find twice as many fascinating spots? hope so!

thu, dec 3
mackenzie camp to glenorchy, 13.5 miles

turns out the guided crossing is still required, so we paused at the harris saddle in a chilly wind for a half hour before being led through the danger zone by a hut warden. we couldn't see any snow on the slopes above us and the only tricky spot was a 10m section through lingering snow, but i still managed a spectacular fall by slipping on a wet rock on the descent, which was witnessed by about a dozen people. fantastic. the massive bruises that i just noticed on my right arm are, i think, a result of this incident...but who can say?
on the track down to the 50-bed (!) routeburn falls hut, we passed a group of 4 hikers sporting a "7 in 7" patch on their matching shirts. i recognized them from an article in nz's wilderness magazine, which explained that they're running 7 of the 9 great walks (skipping stewart island's rakiura track and the great "walk" that's really a river journey) in 7 days to raise money for the leukemia and blood foundation. that's more than 220 miles in a week. think about that for a second. in my typical awkward fashion, instead of acknowledging my interest in their challenge, i stared at the patches on their chests in a way that probably made them feel extremely uncomfortable. at least one of them interpreted my rude gaping as curiosity and passed me a small laminated card about their mission, sheepishly admitting, "we're supposed to be running, but..." and gestured up the steep slope of loose rock ahead of them.
during the last two hours of the track we began passing the group of hikers just arriving off of the transport bus, still smelling pleasantly of deodorant and shampoo and attired in some of the most inappropriate hiking gear i've seen so far: jeans and white sneakers, cotton t-shirts, feminine tops with plunging necklines. every track transport drive in queenstown has a story about some under-equipped, flip-flop wearing idiot that he's dropped off at the routeburn. i'm beginning to wonder if it's just too accessible to the average tourist, though the DOC office admittedly does a good job of stressing wilderness safety.
at the track's end we ran into a fly fisherman who gave us a ride into glenorchy, the nearest town to the start of tomorrow's track, the rees-dart. somehow when i tell people that we're hiking this track, they can't seem to understand me; the fisherman asked "what's the restart?" and then, when i explained, said "oh, the rees-dart" with exactly the same inflection as i thought i had used. glenorchy was the perfect place to spend a night before hitting the trail again; being the first summer-hot day of the year, i bought an ice cream cone, sat cross-legged at the end of the dock, and watched the sun setting over the mountains. this is why we came to new zealand.

-rachel

pictures:

1) the incredible view from greenstone hut. we should be back there again 2 or 3 nights from now - let's hope the weather is just as perfect this time around!

2) looking up the greenstone valley on day 2

3) just past the harris saddle on the routeburn track

4) the blue-green waters of the glacial valleys

5) one of the classic views of the routeburn