Blogs from Te Anau, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 12

Great Kepler Walk After 3 days of solid walking along one of the best walking tracks in New Zealand, Helen and I came away with many blisters, rock hard leg muscles and even more wonder for this stunning country.This track is about 20 years old and was opened to relieve the pressure off the famous Milford track which everyone raves about and is booked up for months in advance. The Kepler track is an alpine track so is inevitably dryer than the Milford and it begins by following the lakeshore of Te Anau before a steady climb for a few hours towards the bushline where you can see a panoramic view of the Te Anau Basin, Takitimu Mountains and the Snowdon and Earl Mountains. It's then a short walk to Luxmore Hut where we stayed, along ... read more

17/3/09 = Kayaking at Doubtful Sound Had to get up at 6am today and after rubbish sleep, really didn't want to! Pitch black and room all cold, while I was wrapped in cocoon toasty and warm. Felt like torture having to get out. Then remembered that if I was at home, would be doing this everyday and here I am moaning about having to do it for one morning where actually getting up to do something really cool = kayaking through the beautiful Doubtful Sound. Swiftly stopped complaining to myself and scrabbled out of bed. Got changed, ate porridge, made lunch and rushed around until 7am pick up. Still pitch black outside as clambered onto bus. Was another American couple on it when we got on and chatted to them on way to main office. Checked ... read more

16th March 2009 - A 20 MILE WALK..........WILL MY LEGS EVER FORGIVE ME?!!! I woke at around 3am and that was me for the day. The girl in the bed below me kept shaking the bed as she moved around a lot in her sleep. I could normally sleep anywhere and won’t wake up but not on this trip it seems….I was wide awake from that point on and had no luck when trying to get back to sleep. I kept checking the time and made myself wait until 6.30am before allowing myself to get out of bed! Still too early to be up! I had to brave the cold shower this morning as my hair was beginning to rival Elvis’s slicked back look! It took 10 minutes to get warm and by the time it ... read more

WHERE HAS ALL MY MONEY GONE?!! I had an awful nights sleep...kept waking up, going hot and cold, headaches and generally not feeling well at all!! I got up at around 7am after being wide awake for 2 hours. I went to sit in the kitchen and had some breakfast and a brew in the hope it would make me feel a little better!! It didn't! No one else was up either so I went back to the room, dressed and had a wander into town to get some fresh lake air. Always wish I was at home when I don’t feel so good. I headed back to the hostel after a while and Nat and I sat in the communal area and chilled out whilst talking about our plans for our time in Te Anau. ... read more

Feb 24- Mar 1 - Milford Trek What an adventure! And I better finish the blog before it never gets done. We have more adventures to report! Day 1 - Left Timaru and drove to Te Anau. We tried unsuccessfully to locate Bob and Tina Powell in Queenstown on our way through and are pretty sure we passed their bus coming from the Milford Sound enroute to Queenstown. We got to our Top Ten Holiday Park in time to book a Glow Worm tour that night. We ordered gourmet pizza in our room, had a glass of wine, threw on some warm clothes and headed out to the dock to catch the ferry to the glow worm caves. It was really a fun trip and a cool hike through caves and around waterfalls. At the end ... read more