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?