A walk in the park

January 24th

Campsite to Greenstone Hut

Distance: 17km

Elevation: flat-ish

Steps: 28,500

What a gorgeous day!

I was afraid that the weather would turn super cold over night, being at relatively high altitude (600m or so) and with the clear skies as we went to sleep. The good part of the clear skies is that I could get a great photo of the stars!

So when I woke up around 2am and stuck the camera out of the rain fly, and got this brilliant shot:

Yep, the clouds had already rolled in, so there was really nothing to see. Sorry - I'll try again tonight :)

And when we woke up, we were just below the cloud deck - close enough that as we started walking, still up and over those lateral moraines, we were alternately in and under the cloud.

We spent another 2 hours or so on that landscape...

...before getting into a mixture of tussock and beech forest for the rest of the day. It was just about the most perfect mix of exposed walking without being too hot, then a bit of sun, and then the dappled sun in the beech forest.

A relatively short day of walking saw us arriving at Greenstone Hut before 4pm, but it was still quite a sight:

Oh, and here is the view from the front deck, not bad, huh?

Today also marks two milestones:

300km done - that's 10% of Te Araroa!!

and we've passed out of Southland, into Otago!

Finally, we had another experience of being surpirsed by the outside world. We met a SOBO'r (South Bound hiker) who let us know that all of New Zealand moved into the Red traffic light yesterday, due to some Omicron in the community. Both he and we spent plenty of time in Auckland in Red, though, and we all agreed we're probably safer out in the bush, with limited time in cities.

Tomorrow, though, we have a gentle walk to a pickup point, then a van ride in to Queenstown. One or two nights there before we continue onward on Te Araroa!