Tuesday 13 March 2007

A nice little walk


I've just gotten back to Queenstown after hiking (tramping) the Routeburn track, one of the great walks in New Zealand, and one of the most popular. This one and the more popular Milford track tend to get booked up months in advance, but I was able to get a cancellation so started out on Sunday with a very long bus trip and a failly long walk in pretty nice weather through nice varied scenery. Day two started off bright and sunny, despite weather predictions of rain and snow,

but after a couple of hours the rain did come, and continued to spill down as I was crossing the Harris Saddle, the highest (and most exposed) part of the trek. It wasnt all that bad though, and I managed to make it to the hut by 1pm so spent much of the day snoozing by the fire looking out at the rain. I even managed to finally finish "a long way down" - it only took 7 weeks, and made good stove fuel later.
At dinner I bumped into Cian and Kevin from Dublin and Galway, who insisted I helped them consume their whickey bottles as they were becoming heavy to carry. They had recently been to Tibet, and got me thinking I have to include that in my itinerary later, even though the whiole chinese thing there will be pretty annoying, its still supposed to be amazing. I'm starting to think that 6/7 months might not be long enough. Today was a beautiful walking day, I'm now back in Queenstown and its quite chilled and raining, a change from the normal 25 degrees and sun we have had pretty much throughout up to now.

Sunday I also bid farerwell to Sue and Damian, who are now in Thailand for some r&r, Damian's arm is now pinned and plastered and hopefully on the way to recovery, so should have a happy ending...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Sean
Happy st patricks day from a wet windy wild miserable bushy park. Ps no water no toilets as theres is a leak somewhere they cant find. All in all Id rather be in queenstown!!!!!!
Joey says hello.
Pity about Ireland getting pipped at the post but there you go.
talk to you soon

seanmullins said...

Hi,
yeah I was so gutted when I heard the chain of events. 1 bleedin try either game.
Well, at least we won a cricket game, you can't say that too often.