Adventure 7: It could be worse: Stewart Island (part 2)

February 24th-28th

It was a rather long first night on Stewart Island.  Neither Sarah nor I could fall asleep for quite awhile, being as the ground was not the most comfortable resting place and it was much colder than expected, even in our long clothes, warm socks, and heavy duty sleeping bags.  Once we did fall asleep, we were woken in the night by what sounded like a heard of creatures having a battle royale over our food and leftover cans.  I was torn between my desire to see what was making a noise like it was being torn apart (kiwi??) and fear that I would get in the middle of some epic creature battle and come out on the wrong side.  The tipping point for my decision was the fact that my feet were so cold I could barely feel them and I didn’t want to expose the rest of my body to the same fate.

When it was finally a decent time to get up in the morning (7am) Sarah and I both rolled over and looked at each other, asking, “So, how’d you sleep?”  Our synchronized response: “Eh, could have been worse.”  It was at this point that the first round of tired and slightly manic giggling began.  We could hear Amanda and Leslie awake in their tent, so we psyched ourselves up to leave the (relative) warmth of our sleeping bags and venture to the shelter to get some breakfast from our packs.  We were greeted by a bag of raisins partially ripped open, some gnawed on carrots, and a couple pecked at apples.  Apparently “the creatures” as we dubbed them weren’t too impressed with our healthy food selection.  They must have been rather devious little creatures, though, since they had managed to partially unzip Ford’s pack to get at their feast.  I’ll give them credit for persistence, at least.  Ford’s face was pretty hilarious when he saw that the creatures had gotten into his pack and no one else’s, and he vowed to sleep with his food that night to

We broke fast with some dry muesli, brushed our teeth with the roof water, and then packed up the tents and the flap.  Even though we were sure it would get warm hiking in the sun all day, it was a painful process to change out of all our long clothes into shorts, with the hope that we would warm up sooner, rather than later.  Putting our packs on for the first time that morning brought a series of grunts and groans as we realized that our hips had indeed been bruised, our legs were a little sore, and our shoulders did indeed feel the strain of wearing a pack all day and then sleeping on the ground.  Sounding like a bunch of senior citizens as we moaned over our bruises, we reminded ourselves that “it could be worse” and started off across the island.

The man at the DOC had warned us that the section of the track between Sawdust Bay and North Arm Hut, about an hour and a half away, according to the sign, would be the muddiest section, due to the recent rainfall.  He wasn’t kidding.  The majority of the morning was spent clambering through the forest around the trail, clinging to trees on the side of the trail so that we wouldn’t fall in the mud pits, and climbing up multiple hills which we named “Mud Everests.”  It was somewhat of a miracle that no one had any big wipeouts, only a couple minor slips, especially when we would forget that we weren’t quite as nimble with a huge backpack on as we would be normally.  As we passed people every so often coming from the opposite direction, they would almost invariably take a look at Leslie, Sarah, and my tennis shoes, wish us luck with the mud or give us some other sort of warning of what was to come, and carry on their way.  When we reached the top of one hill, much to our surprise the girl we were passing had gone to Williams, where Ford goes to school, and they knew each other!  She was backpacking around New Zealand and hiking the track on her own for a couple of days, what a small world!

It was a big relief to see a sign pointing us in the direction of North Arm Hut, 2 minutes!  We took a short snack break down by the water below the hut then continued on our way.  Fortunately, it was slightly less muddy after the hut, as had been promised, but we were met instead with huge hills and what seemed to be never-ending flights of stairs.  Our lunch break was taken sitting on a rail-less bridge, which ran over a little stream and seemed like as good (and non-muddy) place as any to sit and enjoy some more PB&J.  It was nice to take a seat for awhile, but the chicken wire that covered the bridge was rather uncomfortable on the hind end and we were all getting pretty ready to make it out of the woods and to the beach so we didn’t linger long. 

After some more hills, stairs, and not-so-graceful dodging of mud pits, Sarah and I were so happy to see a sign which told us that Maori Beach camp was only 1.6km away that we probably would have run there, had that not seemed rather treacherous with the addition of the pack and less than even footing.  We did, however, pick up the pace substantially and were soon rewarded by the sight of a huge swing bridge over some of the prettiest water I have ever seen.  The reward of stepping onto the bridge and into the sunlight and being met with the sight of bright blue water, which transitioned to a turquoise color as it reached the beach before turning into a red-orange color in the stream that ran below the bridge made the long day of hiking through the forest more than worth it.  With happy little squeals, we ventured onto the bridge for some pictures and then followed the boys’ path down to the beach and along the water to the campsite.

The camp was on a little grassy knoll, probably less than 20 meters from the beach, and was an ideal spot to drop our packs and take off our shoes and rest our weary feet, while attempting to regain full range of motion in our shoulders.  Once everyone had arrived at the shelter, we changed into our bathing suits and went down to test the waters.  It was rather chilly, but the boys managed to survive all the way in for a couple minutes, while the girls jumped waves closer to shore and tried to avoid the larger waves that would sneak up on us.  We also did a little exploration of the shoreline and our own little private beach behind the campsite. 

It was around 5:30 by this time so we decided to eat our dinner, which meant it was time to tackle the cans again.  Sarah wanted to try her hand at the can opener again, more power to her.  Minor problem: taking it’s cantankerousness to a whole new level, the thing decided to put itself out of commission and broke into 3 separate pieces, rendering it completely (as opposed to just mostly) useless.  Great…  After some futile attempts at putting it back together, we ceded and took the knife to the top of the cans, instead.  This worked just about as well as the can opener, if not slightly more precarious.  But, we’d already carried those beans for 2 days we certainly weren’t going to waste them!

After dinner, it was so nice to lie on the grass with our faces to the sun and be able to completely relax, listening to the waves and without feeling any pressure to be productive or talk or even move.  Finally, we decided we had better find a good home for the flap for the night, which proved to be slightly more difficult than it had been at Sawdust Bay.  After dragging it around to various locations and trying (and failing) to tie it to the trees in any semblance of a shelter, we ended up putting it basically in the bush, a little ways back from where we’d set up the tents on the grass next to the beach.  Fortunately, there is not much native wildlife in New Zealand, other than the reclusive kiwi and the occasional small rodent, so we figured we should be fine.  It was Amanda, Leslie, and my turn to sleep in the flap, so after watching the sun set over the mountains, setting our alarms for 6am so that we could watch the sunset, and playing a couple rounds of cards we crawled into our mummy bags and hoped that we wouldn’t get stepped on in the night by any curious and/or mysterious creatures. 

Though we didn’t have any large visitors in the night, what we didn’t take into account were the sandflies.  These small black devils are extremely populous near beaches and we had been constantly swatting at them as the sun went down.  I don’t think I’ll be able to hear a buzzing noise for quite some time without automatically jumping and brushing at my face, trying to escape the imagined bugs.  It wasn’t too bad as we were falling asleep, we could just hear them buzzing over our heads so we pulled the mummy bags closed as tight as possible, while still leaving a small hole to breathe through, and drifted off.  One little guy (and possibly all of his immediate and extended family) must have managed to sneak into my sleeping bag with me, though, because I woke up around 2:30am to find that the left side of my face was so swollen that I couldn’t open my left eye…not a good sign.  After debating a little bit as to the best course of action, I realized there was not much I could do for the time being except for fumble around in dark for the Benadryl which I had fortunately brought along in my pack, take one (it was too dark to read the directions and I didn’t want to OD on an OTC drug in the middle of nowhere), and crawl back into my sleeping bag to await the morning and get a better assessment of the damage from everyone else, who would actually be able to see what my face looked like.  Needless to say, I did not get much sleep after that, as I could still hear the flies over my head and the one(s) that was keeping me much closer company than I desired.

It was a relief to hear my alarm go off and when Leslie and Amanda had both woken up I warned them of my predicament so that they would not catch their first glimpse of me and freak out when they saw my disfigurement.  Since we were already up, we figured we should at least drag ourselves (and our sleeping bags) out to the beach to watch the sunrise.  This plan was foiled, however, by the cloud cover that completely obscured our view…leaving us lying on the beach, in the dark, freezing cold, and me with a swollen face.  Needless to say, this is not my fondest memory from the trip.  On the upside, though, the sand was much more comfortable than the flap had been and who doesn’t like napping on the beach, right?  When we realized that we really weren’t going to see much at that point, we headed back up to camp to pack everything up and actually read the directions on the Benadryl, in my case.  I was happy to find that I could take not one, but two pills at a time, and so popped another in hope of the swelling going down before we reached civilization later that day.

The hike back into town was probably the shortest, when measured in hours, but it certainly felt like the longest.  The scenery was still nice for part of it, but the last 4k back into town was all on paved roads which were a continuous up and down hill.  To add to this, the Benadryl had really started to kick in by this time so I was feeling rather woozy and more and more strongly considering laying down on the side of the road for a little nap.  Someone would come back for me eventually, right?  There was not much to be done, however, but to keep walking along, and finally we made it back to the DOC, hurray!  Optimistically, we had hoped to drop off our packs and go on a shorter day walk to see penguins or other wildlife, but once we were told that we wouldn’t be able to see anything until dusk, we decided to make use of the DOC’s documentaries and comfortable chairs and spent the next 3 hours or so alternately napping in the DOC, learning about the flora, fauna, and wildlife of Stewart Island, and warming ourselves on the benches outside the office once the clouds cleared.  I kept trying to get up and move around so that I wouldn’t fall asleep, but this just resulted in me sleeping in not one, but 3 different chairs in the office, as well as on one of the benches outside.  We all figured we must look homeless, sprawled about with our packs, but at this point we weren’t too concerned with what other people thought; we’d just hiked for 3 days, and survived!

Our bus eventually arrived, and we had some more good naps on the way back to Dunedin.  The swelling on my face had gone down enough by this time that I could open both eyes, but my face was still a rather concerning amount puffier than normal.  When I woke up the next day after the most wonderful sleep in my own bed with both eyes, one cheek, and part of my lip still swollen, I decided it was time to take a trip to health services.  Luckily for me, I don’t have classes on Mondays (which it was, by this point) and so was able to get some medication which quickly relieved me of my discomfort and most of the swelling, phew!  Despite the last day of mild misery, I would not trade this trip for anything.  It was such a great experience and feeling of accomplishment to know that we could hike for 3 days, carrying everything we needed on our backs, and actually enjoy it! (For the most part.)  I kept having moments throughout the trip where I would realize, “this is real life!” and how lucky I was to be able to hike and take in the beautiful views and just be in New Zealand, in general, to have so many new experiences and adventures.  This was the first of what will hopefully be many big adventures to come and it was certainly a great way to start J

Adventure 7: Canned Spaghetti, Mud Everest, and Frozen Feet? It could be worse. (Part 1)

February 24^th- Feb. 28^th

*Disclaimer: This is a novel...prepare yourself.

There is a checklist on our fridge of places that we need to go and sights that we need to see before leaving New Zealand, so Amanda and I decided that we might as well get started on our first weekend all together!  We decided to head down to Stewart Island, about 60km south of the South Island (confusing, right?) since the weather isn’t going to get any better and we didn’t want to be hiking in the cold or rain.  Never having planned a 4-day trip, much less one in which you need to carry everything on your back, we just dived right in and started searching on Google for buses to get down to the tip of the South Island and then ferries to get across to Stewart Island, where we would start our hike.  There is only one ferry service, unfortunately, so they are able to charge rather exorbitant rates but swimming didn’t seem like the greatest option, so that narrowed things down a bit.  Both Amanda and I decided to buy 15 hour bus passes, which will force us to use them to travel more in the future, oh darn!  Lonely Planet was a huge help in finding a good hostel in Invercargill, which conveniently enough was one of the stops for the bus that would take us to the ferry the next morning to start our tramp!

Of the nine “Great Walks” in New Zealand, one of them, the Rakiura Track, is on Stewart Island.  It starts very close to the town that the ferry lands and departs from and is a 3 day tramp, rated easy-moderate.  This seemed like the logical choice, so there we go!  After a few technical issues in finding buses and ferry times that would get us there and back at reasonable times and leave plenty of time to complete the whole track, we got everyone together (figured we should all meet each other before we set off on a four day trip together…) and let everyone know what we had found and finalized our plans.  There ended up being 7 of us for the trip, myself and 3 flatmates (Amanda, Leslie, and Ford), the other girl from St. Olaf, Sarah, and her flatmate, Jesse, and his friend from school, Emily.  It was difficult to pack for this trip, but fortunately both Ford and Amanda have both backpacked a little before and were able to guide the process.  Our flat decided to buy all of our food together and then split it into individual packages to save on cost and space.  The very organized and professional shopping method we used consisted of wandering down every aisle and picking out things that were a) cheap and b) would hopefully survive 4 days unceremoniously stuffed into a backpack.  Most gourmet purchase?  Cans of “Budget” brand spaghetti and baked beans for the low low price of 69 cents! That, along with peanut butter, trail mix, apples, and dry muesli would be the staples of our diet for the next few days…here we go!

I had a minor moment of panic when we arrived at the bus station on Thursday, all packed and ready to go, and my name wasn’t on the passenger list…oh dear.  The woman behind the counter didn’t seem perturbed, however, so I sat down until the line was gone and then she was able to sign me up without any more problems, phew!  The bus was a little over 3 hours through New Zealand fields and rolling hills filled with sheep and cattle and rows upon rows of hay bales.  We arrived in Invercargill, where we would spend the evening, around 6pm feeling very hungry, which had been aided by our talk of nothing but food for the past hour and reading about all the good restaurants near our hostel.  Conveniently, there was a Turkish and an Indian place right across the street (so diverse!) so we were soon filled with kebabs and curry and much happier.  I decided to be brave and try my first taste of lamb and my first kebab all in one go; it was definitely a good decision J

After wandering around a rather empty Invercargill for awhile, we stumbled upon what must have been most of the population watching Shakespeare in the Park.  We tried to sneakily watch a little, but unfortunately it was about over, so we headed back to our hostel to check out a movie and relax before our real journey began.  Since Amanda has never seen “The Return of the King,” we decided that she needed to watch it, seeing as how she might be traveling where it was filmed.  They had it at the desk, but there was already a man watching what we found out was “Executive Decision,” a very dramatic movie starring Kurt Russell as he attempts to save a plane which has been hijacked by terrorists.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, I won’t give away the end, but it had some great(?) one-liners and kept us right on the edges of our seats, let me tell you!  After that cinematic wonder we decided to call it an early night so that we could fully enjoy our last night both indoors and in real beds for a couple of days.  Unfortunately, the combination of excitement, nerves, and what sounded like elephants running around the hallways was not very conducive to sleep so we were not quite as well-rested as planned.

The bus came at 8 on Friday morning to take us down to the port of Bluff, from where the ferry would take us across to Stewart Island.  We’d heard from others who’d crossed via ferry (my Canadian cousins included) that the journey could be a bit rough so we were all slightly concerned that the doggy bags provided would have to be utilized by at least one of the company.  Fortunately, it was a beautiful day and though the ferry zipped along at around 60 kph, which led to rather large up-and-down swells, there wasn’t any more rough water than that and we got to see not one, but two rainbows on the hour trip before we even got to the island! This seemed like a very good omen J  We also got to see some people on a small boat going down in a cage to observe the great white sharks which apparently swim in the bay where we were headed…that certainly discouraged me from going for a swim, even if I’d wanted to brave the freezing water.

Once we’d landed on the island, we headed for the Department of Conservation (DOC) office to register that we were headed out so that they could give us some directions and send out a search party if we didn’t come back on the day that we planned.  Since we arrived so early in the morning, the man there told us about an additional track, Ryan’s Creek Trail, which we could take along the coast before we started the official Rakiura track, which would have gorgeous scenery and only add 3-4 km to our hike.  Being young and still enthusiastic about hiking, we decided to go for it and started off through town (only about 400m) and off into the bush!  It was definitely worth the extra kilometers to walk along the coast for awhile before heading into the forest.  Some of the best views of the trip were through the trees to gorgeous beaches and rock formations in the bright teal water.  The colors were so vibrant, it almost didn’t look real!  We were very luck in the weather for the whole trip, the only time it rained was to sprinkle on us a little as we started off on the first day, but this led to yet another rainbow, the end of which we could actually see coming up out of the water.  Another good sign? Definitely J

When we reached the actual beginning of the Rakiura Track, the sign pointed us in the direction of North Arm Hut, which is just a little farther than the first campsite: 11.5km and 4.5 hours away…better get moving!  After this the trail moved off the coast and into more wooded areas.  It was really interesting how the trees would change type all of a sudden, from huge ferns to tall skinny trunks with leaves only at the very top, then into more bushy foliage again with no clear reason that I could see for the transition.  Parts of the trail were very wide and easy to follow, but a lot of the time we were following a narrow trail that was fortunately marked by frequent orange triangles to point us on our way.  By the end of about 5 more hours of hiking up and down hills and steps and climbing our way through the trees to avoid the muddy sections of the path, all of our packs were starting to feel rather heavy, not to mention the dents that had begun to form in our hip bones from weight of the bottom strap wrapped around them.  Suddenly, after only a little ways over more mud and up more wooden steps, we came around a bend and to our delight were greeted by the sign for Sawdust Bay campsite! Hallelujah! 

We saw a little path leading down to the actual bay, but decided to set our packs down before braving any more trails.  The campsite consisted of a small shelter with a sink, a couple benches, and a large reservoir with water filtered (hopefully…) straight off the roof of the shelter.  Ready, set, rough it.  There was also a metal port-a-potty, for which we had fortunately brought our own toilet paper.  At first, we were rather distressed because the outhouse seemed to be locked and we were worried that we’d be using the nature latrine for the night.  But, with a little working of the lock with a handy stick and the proper leverage Jesse managed to get the door open, much to the girls’ relief! 

It was around 5 when we arrived at the campsite so we decided to go down and explore the bay before dinner.  It was low tide, which was really cool because we could walk out a long ways and around to a small rock bay on the far side.  We could see what looked like the remains of some rusted submarine or train car back in the little bay, so Jesse, Sarah, Ford and I went to investigate!  It was a pretty easy climb over some rocks to get to the back where we were able to get a closer look at what appeared to be two extremely old train cars that had been abandoned long ago.  A little farther back, there were two really pretty little waterfalls; totally worth the climb!  After we got back to the main beach we were all getting pretty hungry so we walked back across the sand to the shoreline.  Unforeseen difficulty: the beach was so expansive at low tide that we couldn’t tell where we had climbed down from above…uh oh.  We walked along searching for the path to get back up to the campsite and contemplating how difficult it would be to climb up through the trees and whether or not we’d be able to find the trail or the camp.  Luckily, we were eventually able to find the little path back up to the top and so avoided any unnecessary bush-whacking. 

For dinner, we brought out our beans, spaghetti, and sporks (awesome camping utensil which combines spoon, fork, and knife) and the old can opener which had been left in our kitchen by the previous flat owners.  As we soon discovered, this can opener had been abandoned for a very good reason: it is very reluctant to perform the sole function for which it was created.  Shoot.  However, with the proper technique (still not really sure what that was, but it involved a lot of cajoling and threatening of the tool and can alike, on my part) I was able to open (mutilate) the first can enough to squeeze some of the beans out of the top.  Success!  Unfortunately, I was a bit overzealous in getting the top of the can off and ended up getting sprayed in tomato paste before it came off enough to get at the beans…well played, can.  Ford decided to try his hand at opening the spaghetti, but only succeeded in poking a hole in the side of the can and getting rather sticky, from spaghetti tomato paste this time instead of bean tomato paste.  Yum.  Since I’d already had some success with the now appropriately dubbed “devil can opener” I volunteered to wrestle with it again and this time actually had more success!  I managed to cut all around the lid, only having to restart about 10 times instead of 20 and didn’t get sprayed at all!  Anna: 2, Can opener: 1. This feat earned me the title of “The Can Whisperer,” of which I am quite proud J  Sarah, Emily, and Jesse were rather skeptical of our cold, canned meals so of course we offered to let them try some.  The spaghetti was definitely subpar, very sweet and kind of slimy…but it was hilarious to watch their faces as they got their first taste.  Since they had brought enough peanut butter for sandwiches for dinner as well as lunch, they didn’t need to try to convince themselves that cold, canned spaghetti wasn’t really so bad, like we did, and so the true feelings came out.  But really, it could have been worse.   The beans were actually not that bad, and if we’d only been able to make a fire it would have been quite the feast! Kind of…

After dinner we set up the 2 tents, which fortunately were very simple, and then tackled the tent fly, which was basically a big tarp with strings on each corner and in the middle of each side to tie to trees to form a shelter from the rain, if little else.  None of us really knew what to do with the large red “flap,” as we dubbed it, so after much contemplation and many befuddled looks we just started tying it up and managed to form a surprisingly pleasing little lean-to, with part of the tarp folded underneath so that we wouldn’t be sleeping directly on the ground.  After establishing our little tent city, we went back down to the beach to watch the sunset from some large rocks that we’d seen earlier in the day.  By this time, the tide had come in quite a ways so the beach was much narrower and we made sure to keep an eye on our path off the rocks so that we wouldn’t have to do any unplanned swimming.  A little surprise: when we climbed up to a large boulder to make our perch, we were greeted by the skull of some animal planted on a stick amidst the rocks.  Slightly reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and rather disconcerting.  Once we got past that, however, it was wonderful to sit up on a boulder, looking out over the ocean with 6 other people, 5 of whom I hadn’t known 2 weeks before, and be able to share something so peaceful and beautiful.  By the time the sun actually started to set, the tide had come up enough that we were getting a little nervous about our rock turning into an island so we went back down to the now very small strip of beach and watched the most picturesque sunset over the bay, complete with little birds who looked slightly like penguins from afar flying across the sun right as it was dipping below the horizon.  It was just about as perfect as we could have asked for.

Once the sun went down we hiked back up to our campsite and played a few rounds of cards before bed, but we were all pretty tired from our first day on the track and soon crawled into our respective sleeping places.  Ford, Jesse, and Emily got the honor of spending the first night in the flap, while Sarah and I shared one tent and Leslie and Amanda the other.  We said good night and crawled into our mummy bags, pulling the strings tight so that all that was sticking out were our noses and attempted to fall asleep while listening to the sounds of the woods around us and hoping to hear the high pitched call of the elusive kiwi bird.

To be continued…