Gravity is my favorite toy

It is totally unrealistic to try and Hang-glide, Skydive and bungee-jump...

... In one day at that is, I had to spread it over two.

I am currently staying in a room above Queenstown and am doing my very best to jump off of every high place within spitting distance tied to whatever rope is convenient.

No rope? No problem, give me a foil or a parachute and I'll be glad to jump face-first off of a perfectly good cliff or out of a functioning airplane.

Due to a quiet little mix-up somewhere in the cosmos we are enjoying an extra day in Queenstown.

Great news for my adrenal glands.

Horrible, horrible news for my bank account.

The Routeburn track is one of the great back country trails in New Zealand and is renowned worldwide for its breathtaking vistas and cascading waterfalls. It is fitted with 32 kilometers of trail ranging from maintained and groomed to vaguely marked slabs of rock. With four huts (kiwis can be wusses about their backpacking (tramping) and build huts on trails to save the horror (the horror!) of carrying and pitching a tent in the wilderness) the trail is recommended at 3-4 days, 2 days if you're experienced and in a hurry.

I don't have that kind of time.

Luckily one end of the trail emerges north of Te Anau (home of giant cement statues of extinct birds and where I was staying last week) and the other end empties into Glenorchy just North of Queenstown.

You know what sounds like a great idea? Day hiking the Routeburn track while your friends van it from Te Anau to Queenstown and meeting them there.

Naturally we had to try it.

You know what's less than a great idea? ( ^that idea right up there )

Actually I stand by it being a great idea. That side hike to the summit of another mountain maybe a little less standing by that idea.

Three of us set off on the first trailhead shuttle at O'dark thirty on the 21st to tackle what we were guessing was going to be a 10 hour day of steady hiking. 30 minutes in we had our first seriously rolled ankle.

Go team.

Between tripping over each other and tripping over ourselves we managed to trip over a waterfall.

All 174 meters (metres if you fancy) of it.

From the waterfall we could see all down the glacial valley we were sidling to see the fjord-lands and the Tasman Sea off to the west as well as the Misty Mountains (read: waaaaaaaaaay to much Lord of the Rings on this trip.)

New Zealand tracks are marked not in distance but in time you should expect to hike between landmarks. They say it is because the terrain can be so deceiving when viewed on a map and people end up stranded short of their destinations. For the first 6 hours or so we were able to make the check points in about 2/3 of the time expected of hikers. So when we arrived at the high point and 2/3 distance mark of our hike a little over an hour in the black we decided that we had time for a quick (read: not quick) jaunt up nearby conical hill.

Conical is a Kiwi euphemism for monstrous and malicious.

Just like Damp is a Kiwi euphemism for sheeted downpour.

Conical Hill was worth it. It also left us with 2 and half hours to hike the last 12 kilometers, rated at at about 4 hours. So we did what every sensible hiker would do, we ran as fast as our nerves would allow. Which for about an hour was a very slow scramble as we worked down bare rock paths and steppes. Back in the forest though we were able to step up the pace to half the marked times.

I fell, I bled, I made it to the trail-end by 6 (our goal). That last part is all that matters.

I changed my mind, there is no such thing as too much Lord of the Rings.

In Queenstown, it rains people, at any given time you can look up and there will be no less than 10 parachutes/hangliders/parasailers/man-birds soaring around above you.

I know that I have been doing something right because I have started to run into people over and over again. Travelers and natives alike are in the right places at the right times and its like a reunion between old friends with people I talked to waiting in line for an ice cream cone.

So free pool night is my absolute favorite bar gimmick. While staying near Lake Wanaka I played a fellow student who was from Switzerland. After getting totally stomped on for a couple of racks I asked how long he had been playing, to which he replied "Oh I stopped playing tournaments when I was 10".

It was then I decided to stop taking it easy on him.

There are wild goats here, and they don't get much taller than my knees, they are ridiculous.

well until next time,

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover