Mintaro Hut (with kea)

Some of forty fellow walkers enjoying the brighter weather.

We were really happy to arrive at the Mintaro hut so we could bask in the sunshine and dry out our wet gear.

But there was another reason to festoon the verandah with damp boots and rain parkas.

Mintaro is the highest of the hiking huts on the Milford so it comes with kea and special rules about dealing with those curious, pesky South Island parrots.

• Keep all doors closed -- kea will walk in and investigate/destroy anything that is not bolted down.  

• Hang your hiking boots -- kea will remove your laces and even demolish your boots if they have half a chance.

Of course what we all really wanted was to watch these delightful birds at their mischief!  But our hut warden, Manaa Ki, would have boiled us for breakfast if we dared disobey his orders!  He held us in thrall during his hut talk as he imitated a pleading kea and warned us not to succumb to its frisky charm.

This burly bloke, who surely came straight to hut wardenship from the NZ army, was also passionate about litter.  He stomped back and forth waving actual pieces of garbage that had been found around the hut or on the track and exhorted us to fess up.

Manaa (waving a piece of paper) : "Who will admit to dropping this receipt for two Back Country freeze dried channa masala dinners purchased in Queenstown at the New World grocery?  Is this another crime we can pin on Mr, Nobody?  Grrrrrrr.  I am so upset! I hate litter!!  What do you say?  Will you be sure to pack all your rubbish out -- every scrap?  Speak up!!

40 assorted, suitably cowed trampers:  Sure/OK/yeah/Oui/......

Manaa:  Sweet as!  (Kiwi slang for "cool')

We did see plenty of kea, by the way.  They swooped around in the trees that evening, and as we left on the long march up to the Mackinnon Pass in the morning, there were three of them on the hut roof -- busily trying to remove the nails.



Boots off and contemplating dinner....

Milford Track: Day 2

Although the second day should have been an easy 16.5 km walk to the Mintaro Hut, we got off to a stressful start.

My dear husband, who thought I had fallen into the Te Anau River.

First, it was raining as we set out (no surprise there) and then I became separated from my husband and friends.

How this came about is a long story that began with one mis-communication:  I didn't realize that my husband Bruce was going to that outdoor Clinton loo and not down the trail.

Off I went on my own, convinced that  members of my party were before and behind me.  But when I hadn't seen anyone  for several hours, it became apparent even to me, that something was very wrong.  What could have happened?  Where was he?  Where were they? 

Could they all be following me, wondering where I was?

Such lush foliage1  And NO RAIN!

In our universally anxious state, no pictures we taken until I finally stopped and waited for our party. Then we assembled our little group for the 600 metre climb to the Mintaro Hut. By then we were all in a more cheerful frame of mind and the sun was shining!

The Warden

NZ Department of  Conservation (DOC) hiking huts each have a manager or warden.  These folks (male and female) look after their patch -- buildings and track-- and account for their 40 trampers, making sure everyone has signed in and is not lost on the trail.   The wardens also impart hut protocol to their newbie groups. 

 Apres hike meal at the Clinton hut.  We, of course, tidied this area to the warden's standards.

A mandatory and invariably entertaining "hut talk" at 8 pm covers the basics:  fire safety, clean-up procedures in the kitchen and bunk rooms,  track highlights for the next day, and an all important weather update.  (We learned that day two would be rainy, clearing in the afternoon.)

Each warden also has special knowledge to impart. Peter, our Clinton hut warden, told us all about the stoat and rat traps on the track, complete with stuffed stoat and rat props.  (Stoats, rats, possums and mice --all introduced species--are a menace to native birds.  Trapping these pests is a national pastime. )

Peter also seemed to have specialized knowledge of every porta-potty on the trail and offered further instruction about what to do when these facilities were not available.  Yikes.  Whatever would we learn from the Hut Warden on day two?

The little orange arrow is an indicator that a trap is nearby, and there it is!. 

Milford Track: Day 1

You cannot just spontaneously decide to walk the Milford Track.  You have to book months in advance because only 40 people a day are permitted on this popular walk.

We are already looking like drowned rats and the walk hasn't even begun.

You make an appointment for a specific four day span (including three nights accommodation at hiking huts strategically placed along the way) and you pray for decent weather.

Bad forecast for the your four days?  Tough.  New Zealand's Fiordland gets a lot of rain -- about 250 days a year.  If there isn't rain on the Milford Track, you have been cheated.

At least that's what we told ourselves as we pulled on all our rain gear and took the boat across Lake Te Anau for the first leg of the journey. 

The boat trip to the head of the track took about an hour, and was shared by some of the other 40 people who would be walking at the same time.

On our boat there were also a number of folks who paid big bucks for a "guided walk".  (We "independent" or "freedom" walkers paid too, but not nearly so much.) Guided walkers take the same time to complete the track but stay in "lodges" with hot water, real beds,  electric lights and meals provided.  We independents felt somewhat superior to these cossetted trekkers and comforted ourselves that the rain falls on everyone, but we had not paid quite so much to get wet.


All walkers are also plagued by the same sand flies.  The good news is that the bugs don't like the rain, so the message posted on the boat was not really necessary. 

We arrive at Clinton Hut in the rain. 

After an easy 5 km. walk we arrived at out first stop, the Clinton hut.  (The guided walkers only went 1 km to their accommodation! )

Clinton Hut is like a children's sleepaway camp: there is a  bunk room, a separate kitchen, and a toilet block out back for men and women.  A quick trip to the latter upon arrival confirmed that I would later be brushing my teeth and washing up in cold water by the light of a flashlight alongside some guy I didn't know.  I vowed right then to avoid a four-in-the-morning bathroom visit.  Creeping out of my sleeping bag, getting dressed, and picking my way in the rain and dark to the pitch-black toilets is not my idea of a good time.

Will Walk For Food

I first hiked from Lake Louise to the tea house at The Plain of the Six Glaciers back in 1966 and was rewarded with coffee and a delicious piece of home made apple pie. It is a vivid recollection and ever since,  my hiking motto has been something along the line of "Will Walk for Food"

I wonder if I will remember any of what we will be taking with us on the Milford track?  Having hefted all our food options, I suspect that my Milford food memories will (unhappily) be limited to whatever items might be classified as part of a weight-bearing regime.

Food for Four.  Yum Yum

Here is a picture of what we will be carrying.  I've not included the pots, dishes, cutlery, granola and bread that are yet to come, nor the meat and fresh vegetables that Ian has planned for a first night stir-fry. The bottle of wine he intends to pack is missing, too. I will lobby hard for consuming the heaviest foods first!

Personally, I am most enthusiastic about the bag of One Square Meal (s) -- each portion is a meal replacement of 750 calories.  If we had purchased one bag apiece, think of the space (and weight) we could have saved!   But I bet they don't taste like apple pie...

In "Training"

In the tall grass, walking up hill,  you can hardly tell that it is about 10 degrees!

In preparation for our 50 km, Milford Track excursion on Thursday, we have been trying to do a bit of walking in the hills around Dunedin.

(I'm sure that these 3 to 5 hour hikes are helping to make up for some of our winter sluggishness, but I wonder if it will be enough.)

Never mind...we have seen some very nice hilltop scenery. 

The big cypress trees (macrocarpa) and the yellow ragwort are imports that love NZ.

The view of Dunedin from the top was great -- things fell apart on the descent!

I would love to have been able to have taken pictures of the worst of today's walk -- slogging down hill through ferny undergrowth under giant tree ferns. It was muddy and slippery and dark, too dark for photographs. 

South Pacific Summer

This is our friend Ian on his way to church this morning.  He is wearing:

long sleeved shirt (and tie)
long wool trousers
woolen jumper
tweed sport coat
woolen overcoat

Blgggh!

I remember when we lived in New Zealand and called weather like this ..... "winter".

House and Garden

The well-placed kitchen window overlooks the harbour

I love the variety of New Zealand domestic architecture.

The most interesting houses are typically charming old cottage-like villas (pre 1900s), compact American Bungalow Style character homes, or architect designed houses that are carefully situated to take advantage of the spectacular  harbour views.

Side view of house with rock garden

Our friends own one of the latter, a beautiful house on a great property.

Sunny garden!

It is made even more interesting because it surrounded by a magnificent garden, or gardens if you want to distinguish between the rock garden, the water garden, the shade garden and the formal, sunny garden.

Ian is the gardener, and he grumbles that the property takes up a lot of time. But for his friends who come to visit and admire, the effort is certainly worth it.

Sea Lions...!

Ian circles a young sea lion who is flipping sand with his tail like mad.

Like Wellington, Dunedin is built on hills around a harbour, and some of the best walking is along the coast.

Yesterday we went for a walk on Allan's Beach and discovered that we were not the only ones enjoying sand and scenery.

This is a well-known location for Hooker Sea Lions who come in from the surf to loll around on the sand and have a snooze.

These two boulder-looking lumps are mother and child.

Sometimes they flip sand over themselves.  I once thought this was to disguise their appearance (I am not a big black sea lion, I am a big mound of sand) but they actually do this to discourage insects. 

To the casual observer, they are pretty well disguised, anyway.  The young ones are a pale sandy colour, and the darker adults look a lot like giant clumps of seaweed until you walk over to them and they lift their heads and yawn.  They do not seem to mind being a tourist attraction.

We probably saw over 10 sea lions on the kilometre long beach. I finally stopped taking pictures.

This adult, who was the size of a black bear, used his tail to scratch under his chin--just like a dog.

It was a beautiful day for man and beast! 

The water, by the way, was very cold.  No one goes in the ocean around Dunedin unless they are surfers (in wet suits) .....or sea lions.

Wild at Heart?

We'll be returning to Wellington later in March, so we'll have another visit to the airport (improbably known as Wild At Heart).

This is a good thing because I don't want to remember it as it was yesterday at mid-day when we took the plane to Dunedin.

Wellington Walks

New Zealand grasses.  The train line is right above! 

Wellingtonians who live in the inner suburbs think nothing of walking into town on the various tracks and paths that lead down to the harbour.

We recently joined friends on the path down the Ngaio Gorge.  Our destination was the well-known Bordeaux Bakery on Thorndon Quay.

Cabbage tree

For part of the way this is a walk through native bush where the trees and grasses look sort of familiar, but they are not.   Even the air smells exotic to a Canadian nose used to the mixed forest of The Bruce Trail.  There were no mammal sightings -- no squirrels or chipmunks running across our path -- since New Zealand has no indiginous species other than birds and reptiles.  I was thrilled to recognize the bell-like song of the tuis who seem to love these woodsy tracks right in the middle of the city.


A billboard welcomes us into town.

Trainz to Town

Waiting at the station....

If you live in the Wellington suburbs, going into town means going down.  Down the cable car if you live as I once did, in Kelburn, or if you are in the outer suburbs, you can take the communter train.  It is fast, easy, and delivers you in short order to the main train station.

Mind you, station signage does not fill the traveller with confidence.  Our friends speculate that a pleased Scot wrote this announcement. 

We are told that a new train will soon be on this route, after a long struggle during which tunnels had to be enlarged. It turns out the old tunnels were a bit too snug for the new train. I hope everything fits properly now.

Still, I'm glad we won't be on that inaugural journey....

Coffee Anyone?

Wellington is full of great coffee shops that serve wonderful coffee but you need to learn the vocabulary.  For me, it is a Flat White all the way, but my husband always gets a Long Black. 

The library cafe makes a great Flat White!

Apparently the Flat White (a sort of  non-fluffy cappuccino) was developed in Melbourne where it failed to find favour, but an enterprising Kiwi took the idea to Wellington and a great cup of coffee was born.

Cool Capital

In downtown Wellinton today I saw a lighted crawl on the stock exchange that proclaimed "The Coolest Little Capital in the World".  At last ....some recognition for this fascinating harbour city at the bottom of New Zealand's North Island. 

A feature of the downtown is Civic Square, a gorgeous public space near the harbour.  I love the floating fern ball which is strung on invisible wires above the courtyard!

The old and new libraries flank this Square.  The art deco building on the right is the former library where I once worked as a children's librarian.  It is now an art gallery. The new library is on the edge of the Square and has the most interesting, undulating windows. 

The Wellington Public Library -- wiggly wall and cabbage tree garden

Fasten Your Seatbelt

Who wouldn't want to spend 14 hours (Vancouver to Auckland ) on an airline that begins the journey with an: All Blacks In Flight Safety video that is fun and informative?  Air Canada, take note!

Another reason to sit tight?  We finished our long haul by flying on to Wellington, rated as one of the Scariest Airports in the World. 

The fact that I am massively jet-lagged and enjoying the view of our friends' lovely Wellington garden is testimony to the fact that today was a very good day (and a very, very, long day) for flying.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

WhatdIforget? WhatdIforget? WhatdIforget? WhatdIforget?

Sigh.

I'll find out when we get there.

Packing Panic

In a day or so we leave for New Zealand.  We will be visiting friends, and we will be doing a couple of "great walks".  One suitcase and backpack apiece is what we have allotted ourselves for 6 weeks, so finally we have begun to do a bit of strategic packing.

For me, it is all about weight-- the heaviness of individual items, not the overall heft of my smallish suitcase.  What I care about is the content of the backpack I will be carrying for 4 days and 53.5 kms when I am on the Milford Track. I know what a pack feels like when it is laden down with food, cooking utensils and other items over which I have no control, so when it comes my clothing and toiletries, less is definitely more.  I have been holding t-shirts and underwear at arm’s length, testing for weight.  How many pairs of socks do I really need for four days?  Anything too heavy stays home.  

Then there are our hiking books.  New Zealand is obsessed with clean hiking boots—it is an agricultural thing; no foreign contaminants are allowed into the country.  We have scrubbed ours down in anticipation of inspection upon arrival, although the boots will get sprayed regardless, as if we couldn’t possibly have cleaned them well enough. (I wonder what they do if you turn up with dirty boots?  I bet they put them in boot jail or send them straight to Boot Hill.)

In any case, we know the drill. My husband recalled it all too well in an email to a friend:  The trick is to get off the plane in Auckland, get our bags, admit that we have boots, turn them over, get the bags x-rayed to show there are no other boots ($200 fine if guilty of hiding boots), wait for the sprayed boots to return, re-pack the boots, get bags together, rush out of the International Terminal, follow the blue line on the road to the domestic terminal (15 minutes) and check our bags in for the flight to Wellington.

He’s right.  We have about an hour and a half to pass muster and catch that plane.  But, hey, we are old hands at this.  We’ll be fine! 

*crossing fingers*