WanderLust Kaitlyn Jayne: Yes Right Ready Go Do Be Push

Lots of photos and a wee bit of writing. Enjoy!

24 Feb

Drive to Milford Sound. Saw a white heron and a couple of kea up close. One even tried to climb up my leg. Very rainy with lots of waterfalls. Was planning on hiking to Lake Marian to camp but opted out for warm, dry TinTin. Hiked up most of the way though.

Kotuku - White Heron

Kea

NZ Robin

The Chasm

Hike to Lake Marian

25 Feb

Humboldt Falls walk in the morning.

Key Summit hike to views of Humboldt and Darran mountains.

Mirror Lake

26 Feb

Lake Manapouri.

Pearl Harbor return via Circle Track (Lake Manapouri viewpoint),

Hope Arm and Back Valley huts loop.

Three wire swing bridge!

28 Feb

Kepler Track begins! Kepler car park to Luxmore Hut 13.8 km.

Luxmore Hut

Luxmore Cave

Ranger Peter's Nature Walk

1 March

Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut 14.6 km.

It’s easy to forget to look down when the views are like this. Ridges, peaks, valleys, lakes, sky, clouds, all breath taking in every direction. But when I take the time to glance down around my feet I find the precious New Zealand South Island Edelweiss. At first glance it looks like a simple daisy, but if you study it closer the whitegreen petals are fuzzy and felt-like, covered in millions of tiny, woolly, fine hairs. And they’re not even petals! They’re leaves, called bracts, continuing up and branching, reaching out from the stem. The tiny yellow/burnt orange flower clusters make up the center, 5 to 15 groups of many tiny individual flowers in the aster family. My new favorite flower!

Mt. Luxmore summit

2 March

Iris Burn Hut to Moturau Hut 16.2 km.

3 March

Moturau Hut to Kepler Car Park 15.5 km.

Wetlands boardwalk with red sundew carnivorous plants. Felt a bit like a horse towards the barn. Walking quick and ready to be there. Nice views along the Waiou river.

Hut Lyfe! What up mutha trampas!

Sundew carnivorous bog dweller. Sneaky sneaky.

Success!

5 March

Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track begins.

Rarakau Car Park to Port Craig School Hut 17 km.

Apparently I can’t get enough of this tramping thing because here I am,
walking the Hump Ridge, solo style.

The first day the track follows the Southerns Coast through relatively old growth bush with a high, dense canopy and rich and plentiful bird song. Occasionally dipping down to long expanses of lonely beach, I wander along without another sole in sight, my only company the twisted, broken bodies of long dead tree trunks. The gnarled roots and hardwood worn smooth by years of the twice daily visits paid by the rough, wild sea.

17km later I’m at the site of a once prosperous, now derelict, timber mill. Once home to over 150 bush men and their families in the early 1900’s, all that remains are rust eaten and time weathered mill equipment and a one room school house converted into a DOC hut. I leave my pack on the bunk by the old fashioned pot belly stove and head to the beach to watch for critters. This area is said to be home to two species of penguin, whales and Hector’s dolphins.

As I descend the steep path to the rocky beach I am delightfully greeted by a pod of Papakanua (Hector’s dolphins), the wold’s smallest and one of the most rare dolphins, riding the surf and jubilantly leaping from the water’s surface like slippery soap popping from a tight grip. Apparently there are close to one hundred resident dolphins in this bay and I was graced with the presence of nearly 15 of them! Their dark, curved dorsal fin and shiny, pale bellies gliding playfully and effortlessly through the rough Antarctic water.

6 March

Port Craig School Hut to Okaka Hut 19 km.

If Jim Henson and Dr Seuss got together to create a forest, it would be the Waitutu. If you’ve seen The Labyrinth or read the Lorax, that may give you an idea of what I’m seeing today. Spiraled, twisted and stunted sub alpine beeches covered in lumpy splotches of bright green moss and old man’s beard.

The thick, heavy fog settling all around, giving the tarns and bogs a well deserved, mystical, lonely feel. The spiked and comical dracophyllum shrubs poking their unruly mop heads out of the ground in all directions. The spider web highways stretch from tree to tree, a busy arachnid futuristic metropolis. Even the presence of Henson/Seuss characters seem all too likely, if you know where to look, or how to look. They were probably watching me slosh my way through the mud and stomp my way across the alpine boardwalks. Whatever worms may have greeted me a fine ‘ello, not hello, would have gone unheard as I traversed the tiered terrain.

Dracophyllum

And now I sit by a warm fire in a castle on a cloud. More like in a cloud, really. The fog has yet to lift and I wonder if it has eaten up the rest of the world and this plot of magical land is all that’s left. That’s sure how it felt alone walking through the bush today. I like the feeling of being the only human creature in the forest, because the birds, insects and peeping eyes of every other hidden unseen wonder is plenty of company.

7 March

Okaka Hut to Rarakau Car Park 19 km.

Sunrise

8 March

Bluff Hill to Stirling Point to Lookout Point and return 4 km.

Drive from Riverton to Curio Bay.
Yellow eyed penguins at dusk on Fossilized Forest beach.

I’m in a small crowd watching the yellow eyed penguins come ashore to feed their young. No one knows I’m here because I’m as much a rock or a tide pool as I am a person.