riverECHO

As my mom and stepdad left town last week our weather seemed to change instantly. No offense mom and Steve, but I think you took the rain with you. We spent Saturday afternoon at a few local events. The first was the Queenstown Aerofest where paragliders, wakeboarders, and sky divers showed off their skills in the air above the Queenstown beach. The second was the Arrowtown Street Party where we drank local beer, ate local food (we sampled our first “cheese roll” which is basically just a piece of white bread rolled around a piece of cheese and grilled a.k.a. grilled cheese sandwich), and watched local musicians and fire dancers twirling fire hula hoops and whips. It was all pretty entertaining.

We woke up early the next morning, loaded our backpacks in the car and headed up the lake toward Glenorchy to hike along the Dart River. The Rees-Dart Track is a popular 5 day track with a side day-hike up to Cascade Saddle. We didn’t have enough time to complete the entire circuit and hope to get up to Cascade Saddle at some point, so we decided to just get a taste for the Dart River and hike in and out on the same track. The forecast called for two “fine” days in a row and we debated camping under the stars but then remembered our last experience with a few thousand sandflies and decided to spend the night in a hut. We started out our hike behind a group of 30 who were heading just 20 minutes up the trail to catch the Dart Jet Boat. The short walk was part of their “Safari Package” which also included a 4 wheel drive tour to the end of the road (the same section of road that we drove in our family wagon). We heard the tour guide yell out to the group to “please stop and take photos as walking and taking photos at the same time can be dangerous.” We were excited to leave the group behind and continue down the trail on our own. The track followed the Dart River for a while before climbing up and over a steep bluff. It was such a steep drop off that we felt like we could have jumped directly down to the river from the top of the bluff. We took our time on the track and at one point spent about a half an hour trying to capture a bird’s song on our camera. BJ also discovered the “foliage” setting on the camera making for some very brilliant photos this time in the rainforest.

We arrived to an almost empty hut and were relieved to be staying when the sandflies started to swarm. Taking advantage of a quite hut, we took some time to read and quickly fell asleep for about two hours! We were groggy from our afternoon nap and shook it off by heading further up the valley on what turned into a two hour stroll. We ran into a very skinny bridge that left the main trail and provided access to the other side of the Dart River. I walked across to see if there was an actual trail on the other side and found that the bridge ran right into an enormous boulder. You either had to climb up and over the boulder or down a very sketchy construction ladder that was sort of attached to the bridge. We were puzzled as to why they decided to put a bridge there and not over the handful of streams that we had forded earlier in the day. Not until we started walking back to the hut did we run into two hunters who had been searching the forest on the other side of the river all day unsuccessfully looking for deer.

Our evening in the hut was quite loud with the help of four young American girls whose high pitched giggles weren’t very fitting for our idea of a quiet night of cards, chocolate, and books. Damn, we are getting old.  But we did make a few evening-long friendships with a couple Kiwis and two other Americans from the Bay Area. It’s hard to make the switch from the solitude and serenity of the track to the social scene in the hut . . . but we sure do appreciate not being eaten alive. We hiked out the same way we came in, stopped in Glenorchy for a bowl of potato wedges and a couple beers and returned home by late afternoon to cook up a few, what BJ referred to as Dolly Parton sized, chicken breasts and watched an episode of New Zealand’s always entertaining Flight of the Concords.

BJ turns 33 today . . . Happy Birthday to my best friend and the love of my life. I don’t think it’s felt like much of a birthday for him yet as he has been glued to his computer in meetings for most of the day. We’ll get out this afternoon to celebrate with the rest of the town with green beer and some good ol’ Irish music. Is it me or is it funny that the entire world seems to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day . . . maybe it’s just a good excuse for another drinking holiday . . . but it sure does make for a fun birthday.