The Anau and the Kepler Track

After resting up after the fabulous Routeburn it was time to decide how best to make the most of this stunning area of New Zealand, particularly the area called Fjordland which is an aptly titled area in the south west of the country and is a huge huge area of stunning mountains, sounds, evergreen beech forest and pristine wilderness. It is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is larger than the Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined apparently - totally awesome.

There are a number of thIngs we were advised to do here including seeing the glow worm caves off the  western corner of the lake and the famous Milford Sound of course (apparently Captain Cook missed it twice when he was sailing around NZ and it was actually discovered by a guy looking for seals a number of years later!). The mini cruise to the caves was very good as was the tour and the glow worms (or more accurately maggots with glowing pustular bits - but that doesn't sound so enchanting!) were very cool and indeed you could see your hand in front of your face due to their illumination of the cave - very cool. I also like how they call it a glow worm Grotto - could not see Santa tho, nor was I particularly interested in seeing him glowing in the dark due to his need to find (and possibly afterwards consume) his mate. Er, anyhow...

We took a cruise to Milford Sound as well but the weather was not ideal (but you won't catch me complaining about the weather!) which was very good and we even went briefly out into the Tasman Sea. Jaryn liked it so much he booked on to an overnight cruise to the spectacular sounding Doubtful Sound (apparently the aforementioned Mr Cook was not sure about it for some reason, I mean who was this guy?!). He had a great time and was lucky with overhead and under hull conditions and sounds like he really enjoyed himself eating very good food and paddling about on kayak's and drinking tea - sounds grand eh?!

I on the other hand decided I was keen to spend another few days putting my body through more hardship and pain and eating dehydrated food out of a bag and being bitten by sand flies (more on this later...) and set about doing another one of NZ's Great Walks - The Kepler Track. Well it was totally worth it naturally and the views on the first day were magnificent, really really great. Apparently it is always windy up there but it was still with stunning visibility. The next couple of days were mainly bush walking but still very pretty (at one point I got a little too excited about a mushroom I saw and fell over once again messing up my poor long suffering right knee - doh!). The huts on the walk were excellent as always with some comedic characters acting as hut wardens. Indeed one night I was nominated by the hut crowd to help Kay (our slightly bonkers warden) to deliver the hut safety talk. The stories of my bloody knee incident had by this time got around so I presume there was some irony in there somewhere...! Marshmallows and campfire on the beach of the stunning lake in the evening was always going to be a highlight. Met some great folks on this trek including some young energetic Canadian guys, a load of card-playing Kiwi's, a fantastic fun group of Israelis who took great interest in me trying to explain the difference between the UK and Great Britain. Also met a fab young Aussie couple Laurence and Jade who seemed to be putting themselves through their paces on a load of big tramps. Good luck to you guys - always nice to meet some friendly well rounded Australians ;).

On the return or Te Anau met up with a guy from Barnsley who had spent 9 days fishing and eating trout in the Greenstone valley and sleeping in the bush. Apparently he ate 7 trout in one day...I would have been desperate for a pizza after all that time but he seemed to already be planning his next survival adventure and I will admit I had a pang of envy of his spirit...maybe next time?!