After a long 12 hour drive straight from Picton to Invercargill (and a very fast 10 minute drive from Invercargill to Bluff the next morning because we were late), we began our Stewart Island adventure with a "bumpy" ferry ride to Oban. In this case apparently bumpy means 8 meter swells and waves crashing over the side of the small 50 seat boat. I found it to be fantastically fun but Bethany wasn't really looking forward to the trip back in 11 days.
Oyster Catcher and its young chicks
We arrived in Oban to a full on storm with cold wind and rain lashing the town - which is pretty much how we imagined the next week and a half would be. However by the time we got on the trail there were sun breaks with only the occasional light drizzle the first day.
Dry section of the track
The dots on Bethany's back are sandflies
The first few days were tiring with our very large packs (about 23 and 33kgs) but mostly uneventful. The track goes back and forth from nice sandy beaches to dense muddy forest and while there are no big hills it undulates up and down gullies which becomes quite exhausting.
Washing boots at Christmas Village Hut
Starfish at Long Harry
Our first rest day was at Long Harry hut which was about 4 days into the trip. The plan was to do a bit of Kiwi spotting and attempt some fishing. The Kiwi spotting went great - we went out at dusk which is around 10pm down there during the summer and walked up the track a ways. Before long we spotted a kiwi near the track and in a lot of mad chasing and urgent whispering managed to snap a pretty decent photo of the wiley bird. It was only the next day we noticed the sign in the hut about kiwi spotting - "1.NEVER chase the kiwis 2. NEVER shine lights on the kiwis 3.NEVER use flash photography" in the words of the ever wise Romaric..."Oops".
The poor kiwi with severe psychological damage
The seal laughing at us with his belly full of delicious blue cod
Having officially qualified ourselves as the stupid American tourists I decided to try some fishing of the rocks near the beach. This of course was a complete failure and probably would have been even if it hadn't been for the fur seal that decided to come along to the fishing spot and scare all the fish away. Oh well couscous and tuna for dinner it was (a poor combination FYI).
Kiwi footprint and beak hole in the sand - the holes are everywhere once you notice themThe second half of the tramp after leaving Long Harry Hut consisted of some longer days but now that our packs were starting to lighten up they didn't seem quite as bad as we thought they would be at the beginning. One of the most soul (and boot) sucking parts of the trip came on the long climb up to Big Hellfire Pass Hut. You would expect the sections of the track that follow ridgelines to be drier than parts in valleys but on Sewart Island this isn't the case at all. The ascent follows a long ridge consisting of a full kilometer of mud - not a single dry spot. This is after a relatively dry week with only 1 day of rain in the previous 7. I'd hate to see it after a rainy period.
Mud, for a kilometer
The next day was along 7 hour walk to Mason Bay which is the first sign of civilization since a lot of tourists fly planes that land on the beach so they can stay in the hut and go look for kiwis without getting too far away from their televisions. What this meant for us was arriving to a "backcountry" hut after a hard 7 hour day and having nowhere to sleep. So after a quick dinner it was onwards another 3-4 hours to Freshwater hut. Luckily the days were long so arrived just before dusk and now had an extra day for rest to look forward to, which we needed after a 30km day.
Shags hanging out on the beach at Mason Bay
The last two days were pretty straightforward, one more day of typical mud tramping and then one short day on the small great walks track back to Oban. We did get a bit of a sadistic reward though on the second-to-last day. A large 8 person group of oldies (or a 8 person group of large oldies depending on how you look at it) had flown in to Mason Bay the day we arrived to no bunks. They had the plan of hiking back to Oban from Mason bay and it worked out that the stretch from Freshwater to North Arm was on the same day as us. North Arm Hut is a great walks hut and close to town which means it is always full this season. We did the walk in 5 hours and arrived to a nearly empty hut and got god bunks with no problem. The large group behind us however took closer to 13 hours to make the walk and arrived to a jam packed full hut with no available bunks (there was at least 40 people in the 24 bed hut). In the end some poor folks felt sorry for them and they found room. As you can imagine though with that many people it was about as unpleasant as a night in a hut can be. Luckily the vast majority of the NW circuit huts had very few people in them.
Kiwi footprint - the Stewart Island Kiwis aren't small birds!
Back in Oban our ferry got delayed by 3 hours so we were expecting the worse but in the end the ride back was bumpy but not nearly as "bumpy" as the ride there. In the end we saw 5 kiwis and after that first one we were very diligent not to disturb them. Hopeully that first one has found a good kiwi therapist and is recovering OK.
Lookout point before East Ruggedy Beach
View inland from East Ruggedy
