I’d never heard of Lord Howe Island before. It’s a tiny little island about 10km long and about 600km from anything else, stuck in the middle of the Tasman Sea. You can see a google map here.

Anyway, some friends of ours had visited, and said what a lovely time they’d had, so, off we went. There are no direct flights from New Zealand, and, the numbers of visitors allowed is regulated (450 I think it is). So, we had to book through an agency, and, we had to fly through Sydney / Melbourne. We opted for Sydney as I have a cousin there so it was a great excuse to catch up. Aidan took us for a day trip to the blue mountains, and, generally looked after us very well! A coffee ready on arrival at the airport, I may have to take a leaf out of his book!

Then it was time to fly to Lord Howe for a week. We just had a fantastic time really. It was somewhat low season, but, we had pretty decent weather, and, made the most of it when it was fine. It did rain in some of the afternoons, but, we had some lazy days too. The OpenStreetMap Android app (OSMAND+) came in super useful again. It was just ridiculously well annotated. Even pointing out where the snorkelling holes are, where the turtles are. Beats the absolute pants off Google Maps!

We did do one boat-trip to do snorkelling further out on the reef. We were out for a couple of hours total, in the water for a bit over an hour maybe? I’m really not the best swimmer / that happy in the water, but, if you’re also like this, just know that with a wetsuit in the sea you’re really very buoyant. You hardly need to expend much energy to float around. It’s good ;). We had to take a couple of trips to where the turtles were supposed to be before we saw one, but then we did, and had a lovely 10 minutes or so just swimming along with it. Lovely.

Lord Howe is also a sad tale, much like NZ really. A pretty unique ecological climate has given rise to a whole heap of endemic species, which are getting slowly (or not so slowly) wiped out by invasive / introduced species. One particularly nasty critter is the Crown of Thorns Starfish pictured below.

Photo credit: CoralCoE on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-ND

They still don’t actually know how it got to Lord Howe, but, its here, and it’s slowly eating the coral. I have no idea what you’re supposed to do with a pest like that. Very sad :(

We also headed out to see the petrels which nest in their bajillions here. They’re very inquisitive, and, much like in the Attenborough clip here, they came to our calls (almost came a little too close for comfort. They really liked Maaike’s shoes..)

All too soon it was time to leave. We might go back, it was a lovely spot. If we do, scuba diving will definitely be on the cards.

Finally, if you’re wondering how we took the photos – it’s an olympus tough. They’re fantastic cameras, fantastic macro and obviously waterproof too.

Well, we had a wonderful trip around the world in 2016, and, while I’m sure it’s not perfectly accurate, we did contact Ekos who are a local organisation that basically plant tress to offset your carbon. Yes, it’s basically a big cheat and the planet would be far happier if we didn’t fly around the place, but, anyway here we are.

Next up we had Eefje and Geert staying, last time we saw them was back in Belgium 2 years ago. They were travelling through NZ for 3 months. Interesting way to do it, they bought a car on the North Island, and then, assuming they don’t crash it, the guy buys it back off them at the end. Seemed to work out well actually.

My old friend Dave Aubrey was in town. He is such a complete legend. An incredibly lovely energetic person to be around. Here’s a picture of Dave in a dingy being towed across the foveaux straight. Mental

Anyway, he was back in town touring about with his partner Jess. They squeezed more into their three weeks than most people do in a year! It’s a shame he got lured to Canada… hey ho.

We have had a pretty stellar summer and now into Autumn. The weather has been excellent. Gabby (outward bound watch mate, now just mate and wonderful friend & climbing partner) did the Coast to Coast with her sister. Over the course of two days they bike & run & kayak from the West to the East coast. She was somehow still smiling when she arrived into Christchurch!

Maaike and I also got to Shakespeare in the park. This time it was The Winters Tale. Honestly, I think I prefer it when they’ve been modernised ;) I know, I’m so uncultured. Hey ho. The moral of the story is: If you’re a pickpocket you can get away with it and end up super well off. At least, I think that was the message.

Finally, enjoyed this years Wicked Rogaine series. Basically a series of three 2 hour orienteering events in the evenings. They have really built it up from nothing. There were about 300 competitors this time (each night!). It’s almost getting to the point where there are too many. That said, fantastic to see so many people out there enjoying the hills. Very good.

New Zealand is a very long way from where I’m from back in Ireland. It’s about as far as you can get. It’s a long way to travel, and it’s hard work (30 odd hours on a plane). So, it was very nice that my parents made the effort to come out and visit. Their second time out here in the 13 years I’ve been here. Last time they were here, we did quite a tiki-tour around the South Island, but, this time we decided to just take it a bit easier and relax around Christchurch and the surrounds, with a quick trip up to Castle Hill so they could see where we got married a couple of years ago.

It was really nice to be able to show them our life here, show them the places we go to hang out, the friends we have. A simple, but a special time. We did a lot of eating, we visited the earthquake exhibition. I must say, I thought it was quite good. I really liked – well, liked is the wrong word, but, I thought the first-person interviews they had with just a selection of folk was very well done. It did bring it back for me a bit. Earthquakes are rubbish.

We also went along to Ernst Rutherfords Den museum. Ernst was a New Zealander, and he went to the Canterbury University (before going on overseas). It was fun to see where he did some of his earlier experiments, such a mind! I also really liked their family motto We’re poor, so, we’ve got to think.

Christchurch does put on quite a lot of little (free) productions during the summer months. This year they did “The little prince”, one of my favourite books. I really really enjoyed the adaption. It was extremely well done. The volcanoes, the birds, the little prince himself of course. There may have been a tear.

We visited the Ohinetahi gardens. They are a house and formal gardens, vaguely started back in 1865 (old for NZ!). The site has now been gifted to a trust and for the enjoyment of the people of New Zealand. Anyway, a nice place to walk about for a few hours.

Our “trip” for the trip was up to Castle Hill and Arthurs Pass. We spent a few days up there, wandering about the rocks of Castle Hill, and doing some walks around Arthurs Pass. The rata was showing off its red colour beautifully up by the waterfall.

It was super special to have mum and dad out here, and to be able to show them about. Thanks for coming!!

Disclaimer: Maaike and I are utterly spoiled and so the bar for what constitutes an “excellent hike” is really quite high at this stage. Is the dusky the “hardest/best” hike I’ve ever done, “no”, but it’s a decent walk to put on your list. For me personally, it didn’t have quite a high enough ratio of effort:reward.

The Dusky is an 8 ish day hike (usually 10 days with rest days) down in Fiordland, the SW corner of NZ.

There are a few ways to do the walk, some people fly in, but, the way most people do it is to catch the boat across Lake Hauroko. It only goes on Mondays and Thursdays (normally), so, you have to work around that. Our plan was to go in just before Christmas and hike over Christmas, hoping that things would be quiet. We almost got away with it too, (unfortunately for us) there was a group of 8 keen American students who’d also chosen the same time period. They were actually really good, really well behaved but, a big group is still a big group. There were also another couple from ChCh and a nice young quiet German (Johannes) and a Polish-Italian experimental physicist couple!

Anyway, we got the boat in. My plan originally had been to simply stay at the first hut and let everyone else go on. Unfortunately, weather is a thing in Fiordland and we knew there was some wet weather coming in, so, we made tracks up to Halfway hut. It’s a bit of a slog up the valley and of course, your packs are as heavy as they’re going to be. The other couple from Christchurch actually decided to stop and head back at this point. Honestly, must have been a hard decision for them, but, I think a good one. You want to have been doing a reasonable amount of hiking/training before the Dusky, or at least be tramping fit. Also, I highly recommend walking poles, they’ll make your life a lot easier.

After Halfway Hut, the next day it was on to the highlight (for me) of Lake Roe hut. It’s a really nice little hut up above the bush line. We opted to take one of our rest days and explore the area. Totally worth doing, it’s lovely up there, it also meant we lost the Americans for a couple of days, which was an added bonus. There’s a walk up from the hut to Tamatea Peak which we attempted on our “rest” day. We didn’t quite make it to Tamatea itself, but, we did make it to the peak below, and we were rewarded with probably the best views of the whole trip, out over the Pleasant Range. I strongly recommend taking a rest day there. We did see rock wren (no pics) too, which was a bonus.

Next it’s on over the Pleasant Range and then a steep descent down to Loch Maree. The knees were definitely glad of the walking poles. You can see Maaike crossing the river in one of these pictures. The day before, some of the others had waded through water up to their chests to get onto the bridge. The levels really rise quickly around here.

In Loch Maree hut we stayed the night (nice and quiet) then headed down on the side trip to Supper Cove (the only place you actually touch Dusky Sound). As you return the same way from Supper Cove, you can dump a lot of gear in the hut to lighten your pack. Very handy. Unfortunately for us, the tides were wrong so we couldn’t take the short-cut across the flats (would save you an uncomfortable hour or so). The Supper Cove hut is lovely, and there we joined up with the Americans again. They’d unfortunately had to call a helicopter as one of their number had pinged off one of the three-wire bridges (it twisted weirdly). I dread to think how much that would have cost if it had happened to an uninsured person in the US. Here in good old NZ, ACC will fix you for free (including the helicopter).

Back from Supper Cove to Loch Maree for the night, then onto Kintail hut. A pretty pleasant day all round, but again, this area is totally prone to flooding and we had perfectly dry conditions. This day could have been an utter nightmare in different circumstances. Just shy of kintail we had to negotiate some treefall which had taken out part of the track. Then, at the hut, we saw that the three-wire bridge itself had been destroyed. We had originally planned to have a rest day here (partly as our legs were tired, and mostly to get some peace and quiet again ;) damn, I sound like an old person ;). Anyway, as it was a wet day expected the next day from the afternoon, we opted to head on up over Centre Pass rather than have our rest day.

Centre Pass would have been lovely, except that it rained all day so we had no views. Total shame as that was supposed to be one of the more view-tastic parts of the trip. Hey ho.

In Upper Spey hut we decided to take our second rest day and sit out New Years Eve safe from the ravening hordes. It was such a perfect quiet day, just Maaike and I and Johannes. Just read our books (I was reading Neverwhere, loving it). Then the next day, a “short” 6 hours out to the boat at West Arm. Oh, speaking of 6 hours, most of the DOC times are 6-8 hours. I don’t think we ever managed to do it in the short time, and on a number of days we were probably over the 8 hours too. Budget on taking 9 hours a day of walking and you won’t be too far wrong.

All in all, it is a good walk and a hard walk and I am glad I’ve done it, I just won’t be rushing back to do it again. I’d personally recommend the NW Circuit of Stewart Island over it for an NZ 10 day hike (in huts) and I still reckon my favourite hike of all time is the Huemul circuit in El Chalten. If you know of a better hike please leave a comment!