Farmland, Forest and a lot of height meters

So, it starts, after a lot of planing, a long journey to New Zealand and the last preparations by buying food for the first days, we are ready to go! We already made a trip to Bluff to see the starting point of the trail, decided to take it easy and actually start walking from Invercargill.

As we did not have time to train walking before now, we want to make an easy start with short days. In total we have three month in New Zealand, so no problems in taking it slow. Our goal: Enjoy the wonderful scenery, meet a lot of nice people and enjoy having the freedom of doing what we do.

One word to the blog. Until know, most of the people who subscribed are german, so we have the full blog on the german page. Nevertheless we want to show an excerpt to all guys who want to take part and are non german speaking.

Until Riverton we have a wonderful walk on the beach. We enjoy the feeling of beeing abslutely alone with us, the waves and the sun! Just fabulous! After Riverton we come to the other side of the beach, which is rockier and wilder. It is amazing to just sit and look to the waves crushing to the beach. Already after this short time, we find our rythm of  walking, eating, sleeping.

After Colac Bay, where we meet Warren, a really friendly guy from Queenstown who invited us to stay at his place when we come to Queenstown (we will report about it in the next blog), the trail changes and enters the forest.

Also the forrest is unbelievable beautiful. A lot of farn (high as trees), little rivers. It reminds of an obstacle course as the trail goes under trees, over trees, over rivers… and it keeps the mind occupied from the heavy backpacks. We camp in the forrest and than sleep in the first hut.

After the forrest we climb our first hill and enjoy the beautiful sight from Bald Hill where you can see all the way back to Bluff

Until know we always had beautiful weather, already got the first major sunburns. This changed on the morning where we camped on Bald Hill. The whole day – until we arrved wet in the Meriview Hut it rained and rained and rained. It was so nice to see the hut and had the chance to put on something try.

The next two days we had the first long hiking days, the first time we reached 30 kilometers. What can I say, we are slow walkers, so 30 kilometers are very very long days for us. We still had time to enjoy the scenery, however I have to admit, the last kilometers were not so much fun. Hopefully we will get fitter during the trail, so that hikes like this become easier!

After the long days we encounter the first real height meters. The trail notes anticipate a 2km/hour hike and what can we say – they were right. However, the view was breathtaking! The same height we go down in the forrest.

We have our first real encounters with sandflies. Even if the have the harmless word „fly“ in them, they bite and you get itchy bumps from them. Another thing we got to know is mud and tussock. Wet tussock is beautiful to look at, however by walking through it (it is sometimes higher than me) you get really wet.

Even so, the next days are absolut gorgeous and we enjoy beeing on the wonderful trail!

We end on a highway where we catch a hitch to Te Anau – Rest day and resupply!

News to „hiking4haiti!“

As we slowly work on the kilometers, we always keep our project hiking4haiti in our minds. We talk about it on every possibility and are blessed with a lot of positive comments!
Rotary international helps us spread the news which we highly appreciate!
Also, the district governor of New Zealand mentions us in his newsletter! https://rotarydistrict9980.org/stories/hiking4haiti/
Also directly from Haiti, there are news: The first community celebrate their well inauguration! With a big celebration the show their happiness and gratitude for the well. Thank you to all donors!
Please help us help two more communities! If you like the blog, please donate, we will celebrate each donation on our hike!
2019-01-26T04:31:07+01:00