Friday took the day off work. Nice relaxing start.. up at 05:15 for an 05:40 pick up! Drove (well, was driven) up to the top of the South Island – to hike the Heaphy Track with Mhairi, Marcel and Johan. The Heaphy is one of the Great Walks. Personally I thought it was a good walk! the second day was great, but the first day left a bit to be desired.
At the start – on the left is Johan (Sweedish) and on the right Marcel (German).
Now, DOC says it’s 82km.. but addition says 77km. Either way, quite a hike to do in 48 hours. We started at 2pm on the Friday – and got to Saxons hut about 9pm ish that evening. Quite tired feet. The walk to Saxons was pretty much bush walking all the way – not the most exciting terrain really.
The second day though was far more interesting. There were some quite cool moss-art sculptures that I totally walked by, but one of the others pointed them out. There were loads of these things.
It’s a little scary though, here you can see Mhairis’ leg having a lucky escape from being utterly devoured by a carnivourous snail. Not actually sure if this one is carnivorous, but there are ones which are… grow up to 10cm in diameter. Which is kinda impressive! (to me)
We didn’t hear any Kiwi (one of the few places they still are)
The landscape did change and become much lusher the lower we got.. and far more interesting. The second half definitly was ‘great walk’ material.
In the middle – about 12pm we met Joe and Lachlain, two other (crazily fit) trampers from the CUTC. We swapped car keys – as the Heaphy is not a round trip, so you end up about a 4 hour drive from your car… hence the swapping. Joe and Lachlain did the entire walk (all 77km) between 5am and 9pm on Saturday. Which is kinda impressive. And they were carrying bags. Savage.
AAaaaanyway, so yes, stayed Sat evening in Heaphy hut – which was lovely, right down on the beach…
Did get to make some kinda cool shadows (and you can see the hut in the background too)
And then finally out at the other end.. it was fun all in all. I was pretty happy with how my knee held up – did tape it as per the phisios’ instructions.. and it held up well…
So yes.. a great weekend – we totally lucked out with the weather too, two days of blue skies, but it’d rained on Thursday all day, and also was starting to rain as we drove away at the far end. Rockin’
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