Days 52 and 53, in which we do very little at all

We've spent the past few days just lazing around the house, reading and snoozing and attempting the odd swim. The beach is made entirely from extremely sharp volcanic rocks so getting into the water for a swim is a bit of a challenge, but once you're in its surprisingly warm. There are also super-aerated volcanic rocks on the beaches, which is a bit of a surprise when you swim along and bump into one floating the other way.

As with much of New Zealand, the whole of Lake Taupo was created by volcanic activity. Apparently, we're sleeping on top of a theoretically dormant super-volcano, which exploded so viciously a few thousand years ago that even the Romans on the other side of the planet saw the sky go red. The magma that emptied out into the world on that day left behind a huge underground void, which then collapsed and created our lovely lake.

We share the waters with some very tame ducks, black swans and some black-and-white birds which spend their days sitting on a nearby rock looking for fish. We no longer share the beach house with insects, thanks to a new insect management programme which involves regular blasts of Raid into the rooms we're not using and a 24-hour Raid plug-in.

Our only trip out was to stock up on groceries in Taupo, and we took the opportunity to have dinner out at the Lotus Thai restaurant opposite the supermarket. Unfortunately we didn't get much of what we ordered and so dinner only lasted twenty minutes. Attempts to find out what had happened to the rest of the meal only led to the waiter repeating the word “okay” (the second most widely understood word in the English language, after “Coca-Cola”), so we drew a line under the experience and paid the bill.

Day 51, in which we fly to Taupo and meet an insect or two thousand

This morning we drove to Nelson airport, handed back our car and checked in for our 10am flight to Wellington. Being used to international airports, we arrived two hours early and so she checked us on the 8am flight to Wellington instead. We panicked a little about getting through security in time and high-tailed it round to the security desk, where a bored looking man explained “the plane has to be here before you can board it”. Paul asked what sort of security procedures they undertake, noting that in the UK you have your photograph taken, your shoes x-rayed and occasionally a full body pat-down. He frowned. “No,” the security guard said.

Sure enough, the plane arrived five minutes later and a bunch of people got off, and then they opened the doors at security and herded us through unchecked onto the plane. We were carrying bottles of water far more than 100ml in volume and at no point had anyone checked our identity. It is funny how quickly you get used to extremely convoluted administrative procedures.

At Wellington we had to wait several hours for our connecting flight to Taupo, but at least this airport had shops and caféto while away our time in. The plane from Nelson was tiny, but the plane to Taupo even smaller: the passenger cabin was the height of one person and about half as wide, with a direct view into the cockpit. We were delayed for several more hours, as planes this small cannot take off in the fog and – once a strong breeze had blown away the fog – we found they cannot take off in such a strong breeze either.

Taupo airport was the smallest yet, comprising a field and a building only slightly more imposing than a portakabin, so it was not difficult to find Michelle, the chatty lady from Rent-A-Dent who gave us our car for the fortnight. We soon found ourselves motoring down to the Old Smokehouse, a lovely old beach house on the shores of Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in New Zealand. We have fabulous views and the sunset is amazing, but the house is rather run-down and the evening was an endless battle against an onslaught of insects. We've realised that the rules for dealing with insects at night are the same as for dealing with a zombie apocalypse: close all windows, seal off all entry points, close curtains and blinds and keep lights off. We ended up having a romantic bottle of wine by candlelight, while watching a tv show about a 'family wipe-out' murderer.

We've stocked the house up with food and wine from the supermarket in our nearest town, Turangi, but we don't intend to ever go back. The town was built as a temporary settlement while a nearby hydroelectric scheme was built, and is now severely neglected and strikingly different to the wealthy and tourist friendly Taupo in the north. We went to the local fish and chip shop – Grand Central Fry – on the recommendation of the guidebook, and while the food was really very nice the rest of the customers all looked so emotionally and/or physically broken it was a thoroughly depressing experience. The town as a whole seems to have the highest proportion of broken people we've seen yet in New Zealand, which is a great shame but we will still be going the extra 30km next time to shop in Taupo instead.

Day 50, in which we breakfast on wine then fill our faces with mussels

Breakfast involved tasting a couple of wines at the Highfield Estate – reputed to be the vineyard with the best views in Renwick, but too far up a steep hill to be on our cycling route yesterday – followed by smoked salmon bagels at the St Clair winery. This latter is the largest family owned vineyard in New Zealand and a regular winner of awards, but we didn't try any of their wines since we were driving up to the north coast and along to Nelson.

We passed through a number of small towns and villages along the meandering coastline, but the weather was so poor it wasn't worth stopping until we reached the fabulous Mussel Pot in the tiny seaside town of Havelock, where we sat in a lovely garden and munched our way through two huge pots of steamed green-lipped mussels. These New Zealand specimens are giants compared to our British mussels, and made for a fabulous meaty meal, dripping in a garlic wine sauce on the one hand and chilli and coriander on the other, all mopped up with a basket of bread.

We're in Nelson now – staying at the Palms Nelson motel – which appears to be a (relatively!) large and not particularly interesting city, although we don't have any time to explore its national parks, beaches or parks. Tomorrow morning we hand back the car and fly out to Taupo in the middle of North Island. We'll be spending a week in a lakeside cabin that probably does not have internet access, so until then adieu!

Day 49, in which we drink ten wines and cycle fifteen kilometres

After a fabulous breakfast at the Alpine Lodge's café – whose poached eggs and muesli with cinnamon poached fruit was more than a match for their restaurant – we drove up to Renwick on the east coast, one of the main settlements within the Marlborough wine growing region. The drive was a rather tense affair, as gas stations are few and far between in the mountains and the fuel gauge was nudging red by the time we limped into town.

After checking into the Watson's Way Backpackers hostel – where the very lovely owners Pat and Paul welcomed us with fresh cut flowers and two hire bikes – we threw ourselves immediately into the focus of this afternoon: Marlborough wine tasting.

What a brilliant business idea: tourists turn up, you feed them free wine and then they cycle off to scrounge more booze off the neighbours. There are forty-six different vineyards within easy reach of Renwick, and since we didn't really have the time or constitution to visit them all we set out on a simple 15km loop from the hostel.

First stop was the Wairau River winery, a pretty huge operation. We sampled the 2009 Sauvignon and then compared it to the previous year's, of which 10% had been aged in oak. Comparing wines turns out to be the best way to appreciate them. For example, I didn't realise that storing wine in oak mellowed and rounded out the flavours so nicely, nor that twelve months is a long time in Sauvignon years and much of the citrus flavour was already in decline, allowing the nettle and pepper flavours to stand out. Alas, despite a superb sticky pork and peanut salad in Wairau River's sunny garden, the wine server didn't have much enthusiasm for her topic or interest in her customers. We didn't feel especially welcome, so after just two wines we reboarded our bikes and figured we'd probably never go out of our way to taste Wairau River wine again.

Our next stop, the Huia winery, was a much smaller and more friendly place, with an enthusiastic wine server who had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of wines, the wine making process and the growing of grapes. Indeed, it didn't take Paul long to start picking her brains on the trademark and regulatory issues faced by the company when exporting globally. We tasted four delicious wines here: an unusual sparking Chardonnay (2004 Huia Blanc de Blancs), which I thought tasted just a little too much like Chardonnay; Sauvignon blends from 2008 and 2009, of which I disapproved of the more recent for its indulgence in mystic woo-woo (the Huia winery is, alas, converting to 'biodynamic farming' – or witchcraft – which is not something I generally support); and then a surprisingly tart Riesling, with a strong mineral aftertaste. All were excellent and the server had us laughing throughout, so we will probably keep our eyes out for Huia in the UK.

I feared that our next stop – the Cloudy Bay winery – would be overly corporate and formal, as it is the only of the Renwick vineyards to be a household name in the UK. As it turned out, it was a very relaxed affair, with a big basket of bats, ball and other toys for playing in the garden. We tasted five separate wines here all of which were excellent (even the German wines!) and their Riesling pudding wine was one of the nicest I've ever tasted, being much less syrupy than a typical Muscat and also lighter at only 10%. I will definitely seek that out in the UK as a refreshing way to finish a meal.

We wanted to visit a few more vineyards (including the Oyster Bay winery), but it seems they have chosen not to market in the same way as their competitors and, after ten wines and cycling fifteen kilometres through the baking heat, we felt perhaps we'd already had sufficient anyway. Still, we had a superb afternoon, and today's alcocycle is a welcome addition to the dozen or so other experiences in our current Top Ten of the holiday.

For dinner we headed out to the local English pub – the Cork and Keg – where we indulged in nostalgia with a pint of bitter and a pub meal (hotpot and Yorkshire pudding, no less). We returned to the hostel and found we can still only get two channels on the tv in the bedroom, so we watched a series of dross while winding down, including a documentary about a savage pensioner killer from North Island (where we go next week) and an awful US TV show called Canterbury's Way about a vile lawyer.

Day 48, in which we pass Foul Wind and Puke

We packed up the car, bade Stewart The Horse farewell and continued our drive north along the West Coast. We had only a few important stops on route, first of which was the charmingly named Puke Pub in Pukekura. The pub was closed, unfortunately, and the musty Bushmans Lodge across the road was too unpleasantly stuffed with animal parts and sorry looking pies to be worth more than a toilet break. We pressed on north to the city of Greymouth, the largest settlement we've visited since first arriving (and driving straight out of) Christchurch. After a sandwich at the very lovely DP1 Café, we departed the very unlovely Greymouth as quickly as possible.

We had heard great things about this part of the West Coast, but a sudden rainstorm meant we were not well placed to enjoy it. At one point we had the windscreen wipers at full speed and still visibility was so poor we couldn't make out the coastline beyond. Thankfully the storm was over by the time we reached Pancake Rocks, which I had imagined to be a series of individual rocks which sat low and flat in the sea but which were in fact tall towers resembling a stack of American pancakes (thankfully, as this made for a much more interesting sight).

A walkway has been built through the tropical foliage out onto Pancake Rocks, offering superb views of the rock formations, and it was a superb example of how a natural phenomenon can be sympathetically exploited for tourism. Somewhat less successful was Cape Foulwind, a clumsy walkway to a rather unremarkable lookout point over a very poorly populated seal colony. My favourite aspects of visiting Cape Foulwind were the boysenberry ice-cream and the skittish little flightless bird who befriended me in return for the ice-cream cone.

We turned right and headed up into the mountains, passing a series of increasingly small settlements until finally reaching our home for tonight, the Alpine Lodge in St Arnaud. St Arnaud is a tiny settlement nestled between mountains on the edge of Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson Lakes National Park. The local tourist industry appears to be entirely dominated by the giant Alpine Lodge, which comprises a higher end hotel, a backpackers hostel, a really nice restaurant and a more relaxed café. You could almost expect the locals to resent this monopoly, if only the couple who run it were not so friendly.

After a short walk down to Lake Rotoiti – where we contemplated taking a swim, before falling foul again of the wicked sandfly – we retired to the lodge restaurant for a superb meal before bed.

Day 47, in which we tour the glacier in style

We got up early this morning and commandeered a helicopter to take us to the top of the Fox Glacier. Twelve of us were going up in total, but as helicopters are very small we went in three separate groups and Paul was lucky enough to co-pilot in the front (he thankfully did not need to assume control of the vessel). I sat in the second row, at the back, crammed between the window and an enormous American man.

A helicopter strikes me as a very silly invention. Unlike most flying machines, if a helicopter's engines stall for any reason then you are effectively just sitting in the middle of the sky in a very heavy metal box. At least an aeroplane can glide to safety or a hot air balloon can deflate gently until it lands in a soft grassy meadow. I somehow managed to keep my mind off this topic during the flight, and enjoyed the helicopter ride immensely. We soared close to the top of the rainforest high up in the mountains and plunged down to follow the length of the glacier, which is effectively a long valley filled with heavily compacted and slowly advancing snow. I was surprised by how huge and long it was, although apparently it is only a fraction of the size it was even a few hundred years ago (although it has been growing since 1985).

We then span round at high speed to look at a small waterfall which spirals down one mountain face and onto the glacier, although with all the spinning it was hard to keep track of what we were looking at. The artificial gravity created by the centrifugal force of the turns and the large amount of sky that appeared to be directly below me completely confused my brain into thinking we were flying upside down. I kept my eyes closed during this section but Paul took some good photos of this bit.

Finally, after a sweeping roll round the valley, we landed on a relatively flat bit of glacier where our guide, Cole, issued us with our safety gear. We had already been given lurid red socks and big boots at the helihike centre, and up here we were issued with crampons to tie to our boots and big wooden sticks to aid balance and for probing the odd intriguing crevice. We had to wait for the other two groups to come up, and as the glacier is a dangerous place to amble around we all had to stay put and wait it out. Every time the helicopter came anywhere near us we had to crouch down and face the opposite direction, and even then the blast of the rotors would almost blow us away and we'd be deluged in a shower of loose ice.

The trek around the glacier took around two hours. I was expecting the surface to be fairly smooth and flat, but in fact it was a mass of complex formations. The vast weight of the ice advancing down the mountain causes the surface to fracture and buckle easily, creating compression arches (huge bridges of ice forced up from the surface). Melt water also bores down into the surface, creating huge ice caves when you're lucky and moulins when you're not (a moulin, Cole explained, is when a perfectly vertical shaft is bored into the ice by melt water. He said they are the most dangerous feature on the glacier, since if you fall in you fall until you wedge into the shaft like a cork, and then the melt water keeps coming and you drown. I asked Paul what he thought the second most dangerous thing on the glacier was, and after some thought he responded “stonewashed jeans and matching jacket”).

All of these features are made to look extra amazing as glacial ice – which is denser than frozen water since it comprises extremely compacted snow – filters out all light but for the colour blue, and so these arches and and ice caves have a magical glow about them. We descended into one particularly superb ice cave quite close to where we were dropped off, and then hiked up towards the peak where we found a series of vast compression arches, one of which Paul happily had a scramble through.

Back in town, we went to the only other tourist attraction in Fox Glacier, the café at Matherson Lake, from where amazing views can be had to Mounts Cook and Tasman, the two largest mountains on the island. Alas, clouds spoiled our view of the mountains, while a decerebrate waitress and a toxic US couple at the next table spoiled our enjoyment of lunch.

After a short nap, we walked to the bottom of the Fox Glacier to get the full picture. While the glacier itself doesn't look like much from down here – with its full height and length left to the imagination – it was superb to see the valley through which it had once advanced and was now retreating. We were surprised by the amount of damage something so slow can do to a landscape, with the valley having been completely carved out by the ice and now left as a wasteland of rocks and stones dumped by the glacier in its retreat. There were also lots of new safety signs I haven't seen before – including one which appeared to mean “If you're not hit by a a rockfall, you'll be killed by an avalanche or tidal wave”. Given the Department of Conservation's determination to stop anyone crossing the safety barriers, and the clear message of the consequences, it is hard to believe the young couple who were crushed last year under several hundred tonnes of ice thought that a close-up photo of the glacier was a good idea.

We waited for nightfall with some superb snapper with mango salsa at the Mount Cook Café, and then took an evening stroll through the Minnehaha forest, a short walk through rainforest on the edge of the village. The main attraction here are the glow worms, who lurked in vast clusters on the ferns and moss of the undergrowth. In pitch black, these little white lights looked almost like Christmas tree fairy lights and created an amazing field of stars stretching back into the undergrowth. I expected them to look like the fireflies I've seen in the US – big ugly insects which flashing green bottoms – but they instead burned bright white. We tracked one of the little monsters down on the side of a tree and found they really were ugly brown wriggly worms. No wonder they only try to attract a mate after dark.

Day 46, in which we finally meet the sandfly, with bloody consequences

After a spot of breakfast at the unbeatable Vudu in Queenstown, we climbed back into our car and drove along the winding road through the mountains down on to the West Coast, a narrow strip of land around 30km wide and hundreds long, sandwiched between the Tasman Sea and the Southern Alps. The drive that far was much of a muchness. We've spent so much time trekking through the Alps and driving through the Alps and drinking superb bottles of Carrick Sauvignon Blanc in the Alps that seeing yet more of it – however dramatic the mountains and gorges we passed – aroused little more than a stifled yawn.

We've heard superb things about the West Coast, however, and it kicked off in fine style with large clusters of very mangled trees which were so buffeted by the wind they appeared – even in fine weather – to be freeze-framed at the height of a gale. The vegetation is now much more tropical, like a series of house plants which have broken free and gone feral, including giant ferns, alien flowers, twisted tendrils and impossibly tall palm trees.

After a while we came across the coast proper and started to explore a very beautiful sand dune national park, but within minutes of entering we were already under the attack of the sandfly. Our legs were engulfed in a cloud of tiny black specks which left Paul's ankles dripping blood and mine marked with numerous huge red bumps. We had heard tale of the sandfly's powers, but having not met any in over a week we'd clearly forgotten to take the issue seriously. We now won't venture outside the house before first soaking in DEET.

The road meandered inland for a while, cut through a tunnel of tall and dense rainforest, then led us back out onto the coast at Bruce Bay. Storms regularly lash against this beach, spitting out truck-loads of flotsam and jetsam, and passers-by have started using this driftwood – along with rocks, pebbles and other found objects – to build a series of simple structures. Taken together, this collaborative amateur art installation stretches the full length of the beach and makes for an unexpected and surprisingly attractive addition to the coastline, if at times a little too reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project.

We entered rainforest again and pretty much stayed inland until Fox Glacier, a tiny little town with a tiny population and a gigantic mountain glacier. We checked into the Fox Glacier Holiday Park then took dinner at the Café Névé on the main street, where our enjoyment of the splendid food was marred only by seeing the chef – as we entered – standing round the back alternately sucking on a cigarette and coughing up her lungs.

We have a splendid little cabin at the Holiday Park, complete with fridge, microwave, ensuite bathroom and portable television (with access to two channels), which possibly makes this the best equipped place we've stayed in New Zealand so far. The cabin looks out over a horse's field, and the only downside of our accommodation is that our sleep was disturbed that night when we both had graphic dreams following my prediction, just before going to sleep, that Stewart The Horse would put his head through the window during the night and lick my arm.

Day 45, in which we sail through Milford Sound

A tour bus collected us at 9:30am from the holiday park today and took us on a day trip north to Milford, passing the dreaded Divide Shelter where so much of yesterday had been wasted. It took about two and a half hours to cover what should have been a one hour journey, thanks to numerous sight seeing stops and toilet breaks for the old timers on board.

At Milford we boarded a small motor boat which sailed us up and down the Milford Sound, a long, thin salt water lake surrounded by vast mountains and occupied by seals, penguins and dolphins, which is named after Milford Haven in Wales but with which it otherwise has little else in common. The whole trip was spectacular and came with a delicious packed lunch, and after three days of fighting hard through the mountains with our provisions on our backs just to see a few paltry mountains, it was superb to just sit back and have everything done for us. The whole experience was one of the highlights of our entire holiday, and the photos above don't even begin to do it justice.

The coach returned via Te Anau to Queenstown, an incredibly long road journey made bearable by the showing of a DVD of The World's Fastest Indian starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, a biopic about an eccentric old Kiwi called Bert Munro who broke the land speed record in the 1960s armed with little more than a 1921 motorcycle and a few handmade engine parts.

Returning to Queenstown was like going home, and we even checked back into the YHA Lakefront Hostel. For dinner we went to a seafood restaurant called Finz down on the main jetty, where I ordered mussels and was surprised to find that, as with much else in New Zealand, they are bigger and better than the ones we have at home. Here they come in bright green shells and are the same size as oysters.

After two bottles of superb wine, including a truly awesome bottle of Jules Taylor sauvignon blanc, we decided it was perhaps time to do the laundry. Then bed.

Days 42, 43 and 44, in which we go for a Great Walk

Day One: Ascent to Routeburn Falls

Having finally packed our key essentials into our rucksacks (Paul's essentials somehow taking twice as much space as mine), we stuffed the rest into the boot of our car and parked it deep in the suburban streets of Queenstown to hide it from wannabe thieves, before retiring to bed.

We rose at 7am the following morning and caught a minibus to the town of Glenorchy at the far end of the lake. I don't imagine Glenorcy is ever a destination for anyone, comprising as it does just a couple of streets, a library the size of a garden shed, a small grocery and a large possum fur shop. Life does not look exciting here: the women of the town seemed largely preoccupied with their large broods of children, while the men (we were told) primarily engage in farming or hunting.

After a brief coffee break we were taken up a dirt track into the hills and dropped off at the Routeburn Shelter, the eastern end point of one of New Zealand's 'Great Walks', the Routeburn Track. This is also apparently where Peter Jackson filmed the scenes for Isengard in Lord of the Rings, although I guess a lot has changed since the ents defeated the orcs as Saruman's fortress wasn't really recognisable any more.

The track started with an easy ascent through temperate rainforest, a tangled mass of mossy evergreen beech trees vaguely reminiscent of Yakushima. The trees offered good shelter from the sun, but as a result we were only occasionally able to glimpse the vast, barren and snow-topped mountains which towered above us beyond the tree canopy. This part of the journey followed the Routeburn Gorge, which we crossed several times on very bouncy swing bridges, before heading up hill to the Routeburn Flats hut, one of four overnight refuges along the track. We only popped in for shade while we ate our lunch, but it did offer some superb views while we did so: the window looked out across a grassy plain bisected by the Routeburn river, with vast grey mountains rising up all around in the distance.

We realised during lunch that our provisions might perhaps be too ambitious, as the young Israeli couple near us were getting by with a white crusty loaf and primula cheese spread, while we were tucking into gluten-free, six-seed wholemeal loaf topped with cracked black pepper soft cheese.

We resumed the second leg of the day's journey and discovered it was entirely uphill (which I suppose we could have predicted, given the lunch hut was surrounded by mountains). The walk continued through verdant beech forest and I started to wish that there were fewer trees and more views. My hopes were in part realised when we come to a point where, in 1994, an avalanche had cleared a 50 metre wide tranche of mountainside, offering views down into the valley and all the way back to where our trek had begun.

We continued our ascent and before we knew it had arrived at the Routeburn Falls hut a kilometre above sea level, where we were booked in for the night. This was a little bit of a surprise as it was only 2:30pm and we had an entire afternoon to kill before we could even think about going to bed. We got round this by taking to our bunks for an afternoon nap.

The facilities in the hut were very basic. The dorm comprised an unlit room of 48 wooden bunks (all filled that night), next to which was an unlit toilet block with sinks and cold water (but no showers), where we were warned to take extra care at night as possums like to play in the cubicles. The kitchen was a large room lined with benches, with a series of sinks and hotplates against one wall and a single light bulb in the ceiling, which we were told is turned on at dusk and off promptly at 10pm.

I tried to wash myself in the sink after my nap, but as the sink was in public view this was not very easy, and I did not come as prepared as the two men who arrived in the toilet block, moistened their flannels in synchrony and then disappeared into their respective cubicles, to conduct who-knows-what mysterious ablutions.

Our dinner comprised a delicious and balanced combination of rehydrated beef teriyaki (recipe: add two cups of boiling water to packet, let stand for ten minutes) and a cup of flame grilled chicken noodle soup (recipe: add one and a half cups of water per packet, stir; no need to let stand as it is fast food), gobbled up with most of a packet of crackers.

Many of the other trekkers had also brought freeze dried food, but some particularly organised couples had carried individual ingredients up the mountain – each weighed out precisely and stored in a separate zip-lock bag – which they proudly assembled into meals which, due to the fact it was all one-pot cooking anyway, generally turned out the same as our freeze dried meal. The two exceptions were the family whose planning stretched to bringing a large bag of freshly made croutons to accompany their soup (which the son dumped entirely into his bowl) and the painfully thin vegetarian who appeared from the dorm room proudly carrying a carrot, a courgette and a tomato which he'd hoiked up the mountainside in order to make himself a bland and nutritionally unsound meal.

We called it a night at around 8pm and retired to our dorm, where sleep was a mere dream thanks to the constant talking, snoring, banging of doors and shining of torches. As one old man later commented, “It was more like being at the picture house.”


Day Two: Across the Harris Saddle to Lake Mackenzie

After finally getting to sleep, I woke to find that most of the bunks around me were already empty as everyone had gotten out for an early start. I woke Paul, we packed up our things and headed off on the track around 10am.

The path climbed up through the valley, meandered through grassy meadows and then ascended a tortuously steep and rocky valley wall, which would have been only half as bad if it were not for the baking heat. The Falls hut had marked the top of the tree line and, as there was not a cloud in the sky, I quickly found myself wondering why I'd wished away all of the tree cover the previous day.

Pausing behind a giant rock halfway up, we finally made it to the Harris Saddle at an altitude of 1,225 metres, just below which Lake Harris – the source of the Routeburn river – sits all glistening and pretty. We celebrated by stopping in the cool shade of the Harris Shelter for a brief brunch of salami and peanut butter sandwiches.

There was an optional steep side trek up Conical Hill from the shelter, which we'd initially thought we might quite like to do, but after nearly killing ourselves getting so far the idea of climbing yet more jagged rocks just for a view of the Tasman Sea (a body of water I didn't know even existed two days ago) seemed like folly. This was confirmed while we ate our brunch, when we overheard one middle-aged lady report, “Well I suppose it was a lovely view, though I was so tired I thought I'd puke.”

The trek thankfully descended after the saddle, following a steep valley wall through sub-alpine foliage, and offering some amazing views of the mountains and forests far below. The sun, alas, followed us into this valley, and so we took a lot of breaks when the rocks proved large enough to shelter behind. When back in the UK, I will have to remember to be thankful we still have an ozone layer.

After yet another climb up a rocky incline, we cut round into a new valley and saw far below us the tiny speck of the Mackenzie Hut – on the shore of Lake Mackenzie – which was to be our home for the evening. We descended the mountain in what felt like a never-ending series of zigzags until we finally crossed back over the tree line, and were embraced once again by the cool shade of the rainforest. This confusing and overgrown foliage again seemed to last forever, and we took a much needed rest break on a mossy stump until finally stumbling out into a clearing and finding the hut directly in front of us.

We arrived at around half three, which was only just early enough to secure a decent bunk bed. Only 16 individual bunks were provided here, with the remaining 34 hikers having to make do with one of several giant beds which were nominally divided into separate bunks and offered absolutely no personal space at all.

As the sun set, it beamed directly into my bunk and so – dehydrated and exhausted from the heat – I was sufficiently roused to retreat into the kitchen for a slap-up dinner of tinned sardines, crackers, seven seed sour dough bread and freeze dried Nasi Goreng (a meal whose description reached the epitome of vagueness: “Brown rice and vegetables in a mildly Asian style sauce”).

We took a stroll along the banks of the lake through yet another wild and overgrown beech forest to watch the sun settle just above the mountains. The lake water was clear and inviting and my body yearned to swim, having not felt the cleansing touch of water since Queenstown, but we watched as two young campers crept into the lake and winced as the glacial waters hit their testicles, and so we decided it was not for us.

We tried to go to bed, but a slightly feral old man on the bunk beside us – who reminded me of a muscular version of spimcoot's dad – instead regaled us with tales of his hiking accomplishments (including the somewhat egotistical claim that “Everyone says I could walk the hind legs off a donkey”), until we finally find the correct combination of words to politely express the desire that he shut up so we could turn in.


Day Three: Past Lake Howden to the Divide, and a shower in Te Anau

We woke up at around 6am and, figuring it was a good idea to make some progress before the sun rose properly, were out on the track by 7 o'clock. After a short ramble through yet more beech forest we ascended for half an hour and found ourselves looking down into a new valley which I initially thought was filled with a giant lake, but which we soon realised was in fact a dense carpet of morning mist far down near the valley floor.

We made our way quickly around the wall of the valley, met a very lovely waterfall and then descended down to Lake Howden, where the fourth hut on the track sits. We paused only briefly at the Howden hut figuring we were making such quick progress without the full glare of the sun that we ought to keep going. We thus disappeared again into thick rainforest and made a quiet descent down to the western end of the trek, at the Divide.

We had pre-arranged transport from the Divide shelter out of the Fiordlands National Park with a company called Tracknet, but that was not scheduled until 3:15pm. As we had set off so early – and walked so fast – we found ourselves emerging out of the undergrowth at 11:30am, and were somewhat surprised to see that there were absolutely no alternative means of transport (short of hitch-hiking) back to civilisation. Quite a few other walkers collected in the shelter during our tedious four hour wait, and I can't help feeling Tracknet might make life a bit easier with a couple more pickups. The fact is, the last leg of the Routeburn Track really does not require a full day's trekking.

The bus eventually dropped us off at the Lakeview Holiday Park in Te Anau, where we checked into an apartment and introduced ourselves to the three hallmarks of civilisation: hot showers, clean clothes and a Come Dine With Me marathon on the telly. We had dinner at a pretty shoddy pizzeria in town (but frankly were thankful for any food that didn't require any cups of boiling water stirred into it) before retiring to our real, comfortable bed in an attempt to watch Project Runway and – in failing to work out when it was showing – watching instead an utterly dreadful CSI clone called Criminal Minds, in which cod psychology is used to catch criminals (“Interesting, the killer used a knife to stab her. I think we're looking for an adult male around fourteen feet high called Henrietta”).




And to Summarise...

We'd heard lots of great things about the Fiordlands and had both expected the Routeburn Track to be an absolute highlight of our entire holiday, and perhaps by building it up so much we were setting ourselves up for a disappointment.

Our first issue was the lack of variety: anticipating seeing some truly open and dramatic scenery we instead spent a lot of time tramping through dark and damp beech rainforests. Even though the track notes tried to draw a distinction between the three different species of beech tree encountered on the track, this did not quite strike us as variety enough. This aside, we did see some stunning lakes, waterfalls and mountain ranges. Perhaps we had just set our expectations too high.

A second issue was that we never really got any sense of achievement, largely because the pathway was overly tamed – taking a map wasn't even officially recommended – and because we were only required to walk short distances each day. We didn't once have a full day of walking, finishing at 2:30pm on the first day and before midday on the last. The whole route might have better suited a two day trek – broken after the tortuous climb to the Harris Saddle – but without a night hut there this simply isn't possible. Alternatively, without carrying a heavy pack you could do the trek in a single exhausting but possibly exhilarating day, but that would be madness unless you could reliably predict the weather (as the various memorials to the dead we encountered during the trek will testify): you cannot afford to get caught unprepared for a storm in the Fiordlands, and storms come quick and without warning.

Despite these criticisms, Routeburn gave us a superb introduction to trekking in New Zealand (or 'tramping', as the locals insist on calling it) and we'd definitely want to do another track if we ever come back, although next time round we might do more research into distances walked and scenery on offer. The whole experience was also a very pleasant holiday away from the holiday, and tramping through the countryside let us really switch off and unwind in a way that sight-seeing and dolphin hunting – for all their wonders – really hasn't.

Always finish on a joke:

The very highlight of the trek came right at the end, when the entire shelter full of bored trekkers waiting for their bus was united in laughter by the inopportune comment of an older Yorkshire lady who had been trekking with her husband: “Peter, shall I hold your pole while you go to the toilet?” His brilliant response, once the laughter had died down: “We're not at home now, Brenda.”

Day 41, a day of intense preparation

We are going trekking for three days through the Fjordlands tomorrow morning and will have only the stuff we can carry on our backs to sustain us for the entire journey (our nights will be spent in “tramp huts” – how decadent). Today was therefore a day of intense preparation, and so we rose at around midday and strolled into town to take care of our first tasks: buying new trousers and getting our hair cut (results above, trousers not shown).

Well, after a glass of champagne by the lake we went to Freshchoice and bought what we imagined might be sufficient food to sustain us for the duration of the walk. Important questions were asked, such as: How many cream crackers can be considered a dinner? Does the lightness of a packet of Cup-a-Soup outweigh its lack of nutritional content? Are sardines an appropriate side-dish to freeze dried beef teriyaki? (All of these questions will be answered in our next blog entry, following experimentation).

We have a large amount of packing to do, and everything in our already bulging luggage has to be filtered and the key items repacked into our smaller rucksacks. Knowing this to be an enormous and time consuming task, we went to a lovely Italian restaurant – Luciano – for chicken livers and pasta, washed down with a splendid glass of Otago sauvignion blanc.

Twenty to midnight and we are still packing...