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