What I did on my holidays

[MikeP]

Just getting around to moving this thread here - mostly because I wanted to add to it

Some of you may know that my wife and I walked the Abel Tasman great walk last January, and planned to walk the Routeburn Track and the Milford Track this January.

Things didn’t go quite as planned.

My wife and I were competing for biggest drama queen, and sadly I won. I almost didn’t make it on the Routeburn, and neither of us were able to walk the Milford.
A week before we were due to fly down South I got out of bed and put my feet on the ground, only to find that I couldn’t put any weight on my right foot. My ankle had swolen up and I was completely unable to walk without crutches.
Luckily, I had experienced this before and I knew what it was, and (more importantly) what to do about it. I got to the doctor straight away for a prescription of prednisone and that, combined with a non-steroid anti-inflammatory, got it under control enough for me to walk. We did a 3 hour walk the day before to check it, and it seemed to be okay.

So we walked the Routeburn track, and it was fantastic (I’ll add a couple of photos below).
It is an alpine track, and a whole lot rougher than anything we have walked before, but the scenery was amazing.

Unfortunately, my wife slipped on a rock and hurt her knee on the first day. It didn’t impede her that day or the next, but she started feeling it a bit on the third day, and it really flared up on the bus trip back.
Another visit to the doctor, who said that we may be able to do the Milford, but it would depend how quickly her knee recovered.
As will be obvious, it was not quick enough.
I also had a really nasty stomach bug, so the day before the walk we made the call that we couldn’t do it.
That was a very good call, as my stomach bug lasted another 2 days, both of which would have been extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and my wife’s knee still isn’t completely right now.

The last day of the Milford walk was supposed to be a cruise on the Milford sound. As that had been one of my bucket list things, we decided to do it anyway.
It’s a 3-4 hour drive from Queenstown (where we were staying) to Milford, and neither of us wanted to do that so we decided to do a fly-cruise-fly trip. Fly on a small plane from Queenstown to Milford, 2 hour cruise on the Milford Sound, fly back to Queenstown. That turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. I even got some aerial photos of some of the Routeburn Track and one of the lodges we stayed at.

All in all we had a fantastic trip, despite missing out on the Milford Track.

This is the remarkables mountain range - the backdrop to Queenstown. There is still a little bit of snow visible, despite it being the middle of summer, and very hot.

The view from the Routeburn Track

We came across dozens of these little mountain tarns.

Panoramic view from the track. This was from a side track that lead up a hill with spectacular views

The Earland falls.175m high, and a bit jaw-dropping when you see them for the first time.

This is what I mean when I say the track is pretty rough.

The first day was hard - about 20km (12.5m) and very steep and rough, so the lodge was a really welcome sight

I’ll include comments as best as I can:

@sig

Gorgeous scenery and photos!

We are all just managing our own rates of death. Every once in a while life events give us a little reminder.

[MikeP]

Yeah, and the older I get, the more often those reminders come

I’m going to add a few more photos as I get the time. It might take a while.

This is the second day, the set of buildings to the right is the lodge in the last photo above, where we stayed the first night.

This day was pretty wet so I used my phone camera more than my DSLR. My phone is more waterproof and can still take some pretty good photos.

The hut where we had lunch. That’s a long-drop toilet to the right there (which I didn’t use)

Couldn’t resist the urge to get a bit arty. I don’t know whether I could have gotten a better image using my big camera, I suspect not as I’m pretty happy with this one.

Lake Harris

The Routeburn river, which comes out of Lake Harris

The average rainfall here is around 7m, and it rains 182 days a year. So you often get streams / waterfalls popping up out of nowhere

These are the Routeburn falls, part of the Routeburn river mentioned earlier. A lot of people were into the power walking thing and ended up here while it was still raining. My wife and I took our time and looked at everything so when we got here the sun was shining. All the people who power walked had to get up early the next morning to see what we did.

The lodges we stayed at were made as much as possible to fit in with the landscape. This one was built around the natural features - there are streams running through the foundations.

One building is built around a huge rock

The mountains are all raw and ragged. Obviously still fairly young (relative to the age of Earth). The amount of power required to create them is just mind blowing.

@Road_Rash

Great photos, @MikeP! Thanks for sharing the experience.

@Nabiki

Those photos are fantastic. It’s too bad about the injuries and issues, though! I would love to do a walk like one of those!

@Ook

Beautiful photos and scenery.

Thanks for sharing.

[MikeP]

The third day was a whole lot easier. The track was like this:

The person on the left here was one of the guides. His father literally wrote the book on the alpine plants you see on the great walks. My wife is a real plant geek, so she had a great time talking to him about what we were seeing.

While the track was easier, the views were still pretty spectacular

In this photo you can really see the glacial nature of the landscape. One big glacier down the valley running from left to right, with another one joining in coming towards us.

There were a lot of streams on this day too. Some big, some small likje this one:

Bridges like this one cross those streams:

On the way back on the bus, my wife took a few photos with her phone. Some of them turned out surprisingly well

[MikeP]

In between the (what was supposed to be) two walks we stayed in a little place called Kingston. Here’s the view from our front garden:

A panorama of the view:

And another panorama during a storm:

When we decided to stay over to do the Milford cruise, we stayed at a place called Arrowtown. On the way between Queenstown and Arrowtown is this lovely little lake called Lake Hayes. We spent several hours there organising our accommodation and our trip. I also took what I think may be my favourite photo from the holiday.

The small plane runway actually crosses the big plane runway. This jet just landed in front of us as we were waiting to take off

The plane trip was fantastic. It’s a little difficult to get decent photos due to vibration and reflections, but we’re still going to include some of them in our photo book. My wife’s phone camera may actually have done a better job than my big camera here.

This is a birds’ eye view of the lodge from the second night. You can see the river winding its way down the valley, and the track above it, slightly straighter.

The landing strip at Milford is fun. To land we had to go up the valley, do a very sharp turn, then come in fairly steeply, When we took off again, we flew within 50 meters of a cliff, so we could get the updraft and climb steeply.

Here’s the view after we landed. Pretty spectacular airport view

The boat on the left here is the one we cruised on - a fairly large catamaran.

This is another one of my favourite photos from the trip. I love the shape of the seal and how it fits in with the rocks.
I had my 600mm lens and got several comments about it because it’s just so huge

There isn’t much I can say about the Milford sounds - I’ll let the photos say it for me.

And that’s what I did on my holidays!

[Brazil]

Beautiful. Makes a compelling reason to dust off my passport.

[Nabiki]

I loved my trip to NZ. I’d like to go again, and dinner at @MikeP 's place was wonderful. I got to meet the wife and daughter, who are both great people too.

[MikeP]

@Brazil

Beautiful. Makes a compelling reason to dust off my passport.

Well, if you ever do, hit me up and I can host you for dinner as I did with Nabiki

@Nabiki

I got to meet the wife and daughter, who are both great people too

Yeah, I quite like them too