We headed down the Haast Highway which had some beautiful views of the Tasman Sea and great waterfalls along the way. We had been toying with the idea of shortening our backpacking trip we had planned from 5 days down to 2-3 to allow us to go to the Milford Sound and spend more time at Mt Cook. We planned to stop along the way to get more information and make our decision.
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| Knight Point along the Haast Highway. Had a memorial commemorating the opening of the highway in 1965 apparently a very challenging task due to the rugged terrain. |
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| Thunder Falls |
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| Blue Pools - short hike to these amazingly blue pools of water. |
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| Lake Wanaka - we stopped and ate lunch and enjoyed the view. |
We stopped at the Department of Conservation (DOC) in Wanaka to get some advice on shortening our backpacking trip and check out the weather forecasts. After looking over our options, we decided on doing a hike in the Matukituki Valley near Mt Aspiring but when we went to buy the hut tickets for our trip, the DOC guy wouldn't sell them to us. We were planning on leaving the next day, he said we needed to seize the good weather and just leave today. He said we could buy the tickets when we got to the hut so it was up to us. After thinking it over a little and making some calls to cancel our lodging that we had for the evening, we decided to go for it. We bought some food, packed our packs and drove to the trailhead.
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| The hike to the hut was 4 miles along the Matukituki river and through cow and sheep pastures. Beautiful views along the way. |
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| There were many stream crossings to ford along the way. I lost my balance with my heavy pack on one of them and fell into the creek which was very frustrating. This 4 miles felt much longer and I was ready to go to sleep by the time we arrived(around 8:30pm). Graham, the hut warden, greeted us and showed us where the tent sites were. |
Matt pitched our tent and I started dinner. We met Sam and Emmitt. Same was a college kid from Sydney who had hitched a ride to the trailhead with Sam who was probably in his 50s and from Hawaii. Sam had been traveling for almost 2 months, hiking, camping and hitching around the country. Sam came to NZ almost every year because he loves it so much. We hung out with them for awhile until the sandflies got to be too much and we headed to our tent. Funny to fall asleep in our tent when just 5 hours earlier we had an entirely different plan for the day. It ended up being the right decision for sure.
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