Routeburn Track & Milford Sound: 31st-3rd April.

This morning was always going to be a chaotic one, since we had to check out, get our bags sorted in the storage, and buy food for the Routeburn. Armelle had decided that her daypack was not going to be big enough, and so legged it into Queenstown and back before check out, but unfortunately Jess was still under illusions until the food had been bought. Much juggling of stuff ensued, including some packing and unpacking in bag-hiring shops, the theft of our washing powder, followed by a mad dash to the bus for the start of the Routeburn, and lunch grabbed along the way. Armelle’s stomach was still a little on the unstable side, so we were not off to the best of starts… However, once on the bus to Glenorchy, the start of the Routeburn, we calmed down and got a bit of a taster of what was to come when we stopped at ‘Million Dollar View’. The first part of the Routeburn was very wooded and lush, quite flat, with lots of gorgeous shallow stream/rivers with wobbly suspension bridges with signs like ‘5 people max’ next to them, which we had much fun bouncing across. Armelle thought King Kong and T-Rex might be present at any turn. Then it started to get a bit steeper, and we crossed a huyowge landslide (quickly), which we were warned was unstable in wet weather, so it was lucky that it didn’t start raining until later! When it did though, we certainly knew it, especially when we discovered that Armelle’s waterproof wasn’t waterproof, and she got very frustrated when her glasses refused to remain on her nose, and when they were behaving, she couldn’t see through them anyway… We were in fact standing underneath a waterfall when she came out with ‘You could take a great picture like this if it wasn’t so wet’…I blame the glasses…

The Routeburn Falls hut the next morning was quite something to wake up to. It turned out that the pouring ‘rain’ that we thought had continued into the night was actually a stunning cascading waterfall behind the hut which was on stilts, necessary due to the steepness of the slope we were perched on. There was also a momentary rainbow over the valley in front of the hut, so it was spectacular whichever way you looked.

Once we managed to drag ourselves away, we walked up through heathland which reminded us both of Scotland, lots of big boulders and purple heather.

Arriving at The ‘Saddle’, we separated for a bit, Armelle chatted to fellow trampers, wary of incoming clouds, while Jess went up Conical Hill, where she looked down through the clouds. The views down into the valleys below were amazing.

Armelle had been right to be wary of the incoming clouds though, as we spent the rest of the afternoon engulfed in them, making it all very mysterious. Just before we made our descent though, the clouds parted Red Sea stylee, and we got an amazing view of Lake Mackenzie below, with the gorgeous colours at the edge of the lake. We amused ourselves with various superman poses here.

At the bottom of the hill we walked through very creepy, dank woodland with broccoli trees (as they came to be known) dripping with moss and lichen. You could easily have got yourself properly spooked here, so we kept our spirits up by talking about baby names, a very enjoyable topic of conversation appreciated by girls the world over… Arriving at Mackenzie Hut, we had another lovely view of the lake, the water just looked like glass it was so clear and still, and you could almost have been tempted to swim, but we restrained ourselves in favour of the wood fire burning in the cosy kitchen.

The next morning the clouds were still hanging around, but that meant that we could hear the massive waterfall before we could see it. We had both been impressed by the first waterfall, and 5 minutes later we came across the big waterfall, which was, although we sound like a stuck record, properly beautiful, with more rainbows and ferns, and mist….Here we took lots of photos of Armelle waving her arms around, convinced that it would make the photos more interesting.

We arrived at our last hut, Howden, nice and early and took our time over lunch by the lake, avoiding the sandflies.

We decided, as gluttons for punishment, to seize the day and do a last trek up to Key Summit that afternoon, where we had one of the best views yet, you could see right up the green-blanketed valley, and another glacial corrie that kept Jess happy! We did the alpine track while we were up there, which was a bit of glaciology and a bit of ecology. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to identify the 4 different species of lichen, but we did see where we’d walked.

The next morning we hiked the final hour up to The Divide. We were both sad to have finished, but looking forward to the prospect of facilities! The Routeburn had exceeded our already high expectations of New Zealand’s landscapes, and really felt like there was a visual treat around every corner.

We were picked up from the Divide to head to Milford sound, as it made sense for us to do this while we were in the area. What we didn’t realise was that it was the Kiwi Experience bus which picked us up, and truly this was quite an experience. For a start, we had to do a walk of shame down the bus, and as we hadn’t showered for 4 days the driver took great joy in informing the rest of the bus that we smelt, which we very probably did. This was made worse by the fact that everyone else looked little short of immaculate, as they sat there with straightened hair and painted nails. After that we had to listen to the driver, who seemed to have an especially morbid sense of humour, as he delighted in telling us how many people had died on this stretch of road (especially backpackers who had been too busy looking at the scenery), and how likely it was that there would be an earthquake while we were in this never-ending tunnel. Milford sound itself was quite cloudy and rainy, but fortunately this added to the effect of the waterfalls, which were going great guns over the sheer faces of the U-shaped fjord. Our boat went under a couple before heading back. On the way, however, we stopped at the underwater observatory, which was an awesome opportunity to see the life in the bottom of the fjord, the coral, and the rich diversity of the saline-freshwater environment. Leaving Milford we hit the road for the long drive back to Queenstown via Te Anau, where we had an ice cream. Jess felt near exhaustion, but managed to keep her eyes open wide enough to appreciate the awesome landscape on the way back. Armelle in contrast was on an adrenalin high: ‘woop woop bring on the rest of N.Z’That evening we went back to the Top Ten holiday park we had stayed in before for one last night of luxury where we had a long (and much needed and deserved) shower, a sauna, pizza, wine and did some washing. We fell into the comfortable beds exhausted but contented.