I Mean, Kepler Track Was Pretty Cool...

OMG KEPLER TRACK WAS BOMMMMB!!! It was like On-Top-Of-The-World type of Wonderful... like I might NEVER get over the coolness of this past weekend...

So 6am Friday morning, I met up with Alan, Mackenzie, Gray, and Dylan for our weekend adventure. (By the way, 1) Dylan is girl and 2) random cool fact about Dylan = she's from New York but used to live in Westlake Village - WHOA - on the Lindero Canyon Road side of North Ranch - Double WHOA).

We drove west for about 3.5 hours to Fiordland National Park (which is located in the southwest part of the South Island), checked in at the Vistors' Centre, put on our packs, and started our first Great Walk.

So New Zealand has these cool things called Great Walks. They are New Zealand's best/most beautiful/most popular hikes.... Basically, if you choose to do these hiking tracks, you'll be seeing some of the best scenery in the country. There are five Great Walks on the South Island, three on the North Island, and one on Stewart Island. Anyways, we were all pretty pumped because Kepler Track was everyone's first Great Walk. And MAN, it was indeed quite great...

We started off just cruising along Lake Te Anau (pronounced "tay-ah-nu"). Then we passed the Control Gates (It was basically a bridge. And once we crossed over, we were "officially" on Kepler Track - YESSSS!). We continued on along Lake Te Anau, wandered into the rainforest, stopped for a quick lunch, cruised for a couple more hours up this SUPER RAD rainforest mountain, hiked up past the tree line, almost got blown away because it was SOO Ridiculously Windy above the tree line, and then we checked out our TOTALLY NEAT view of Lake Te Anau in the northeast (our starting point) and then of Lake Manapouri in the southwest (our endpoint)... we arrived at Luxmore Hut (there are no campsites at the top) after only 5 hours of hiking, claimed our bunks for the night and then chilled in the kitchen/dining area with all the other backpacking groups. Day One = Championing the Mountains = Success. We made some dinner for ourselves, drank some hot chocolate, taught Dylan how to play Hearts, and eventually went to bed...

Day Two was awesome. And I mean, SOOOO AWESOME!! We all got up, ate some breakfast, repacked our backpacks, AND THEN we spent the next few hours Walking On MOUNTAIN TOPS surrounded by The Craziest Clouds EVER. We had the cirrus clouds that were really high in the atmosphere. We had rainclouds off in the distance (because it had rained the night before). And then we had huge clouds of fog just rolling and rising off the lakes. IT WAS SPECTACULAR.

AND this whole time we are hiking on the tops of mountains... we were literally on mountain ridges. Surrounded by lakes, waterfalls, keas, funky plants, and clouds. No Joke, all five of us were flipping out The Whole Time. Six hours of Awesomeness. It was Seriously THAT Cool.

Mackenzie and Dylan were moving pretty steadily, whereas Alan, Gray, and I were REALLY distracted by all the coolness that Kepler had to offer... Basically, I was just being obsessed with life and clouds, so yeah... I got to be pretty occupied with just existing so high in the sky... and Alan and Gray are both film majors so both of them kept alternating between filming with their video cameras and using their regular still cameras... Anyways, so we got separated from Mackenzie and Dylan a couple times Oops. But they waited by the kea birds to eat lunch with us! When we caught up with them, they were just chilling by a group of keas. (Keas are one of the few alpine parrots in the world... they make the weirdest sounds... like a dying cat. But Keas are really pretty... from far away they just look dark brown or black, but when you see one up close, you can see that it has orange feathers on the underside of it wings and blue feathers on its outer wings.) Anywho, we all sat down on top of our mountain and had lunch together and it was delicious... Peanut butter, honey, and banana all in a tortilla for me YUM :)

After our lunch stop, Mac and Dylan motored ahead and Alan, Gray, and I cruised along some more ridges together. We eventually descended and got back down to the tree line where the trees were all nice and mossy. We descended more and more back into the rainforest, crossed a few bridges, passed some little waterfalls, and arrived at Iris Burn hut and campsite only ten minutes behind Mac and Dylan. We all set up our tents, took a break in the shade away from the bugs, cruised over to this MONSTER Waterfall nearby, made some dinner, and went to bed... Yay for Day Two!!

Totally could not sleep at all that night. It wasn't that cold for me in the tent in my sleeping bag, the grass was really soft... so I have no clue why, but I pretty much got no sleep Sunday night. Kinda weird but whaterror, we all got up at 7am (AHH! It was SO COLD that morning and the sun wasn't even out yet) because we wanted to pack everything up and leave at 8am... because it's supposed to take people eight hours to get to from Iris Burn to Rainbow Reach (our endpoint) and we wanted to have enough time to hike to Rainbow Reach and catch a shuttle at 5pm.

We packed everything up and headed out of Iris Burn around 8am so yay, that worked out pretty well... Mackenzie was leading our group for most of the day and so she got to set the pace for us. MACKENZIE MOVES SO FAST! She seriously walks SO FAST! And she doesn't stop or slow down EVERR... So basically, we were moving like machines. It got to the point where I couldn't even fathom stopping or slowing down... like I Could Walk Like This Forever... so Why In The World Would I Want To Stop? Okay, I mean... we did stop for breakfast on the trail and for lunch by the lake, etc... but other than that, we just kept moving through the forest like some unstoppable hiking force, It Was Awesome... I thoroughly enjoyed moving that fast for such a long period of time. Anyway, all the native flora and fauna was looking especially delightful that day, Lake Manapouri was all sweet and sparkly in the sunlight, and the trail to Rainbow Reach was pretty easy so Day Three = So Good.

Cool Things about Lake Manapouri (pronounced like"man-na-pour-e"):

- You can drink the water straight out of the lake. So when we stopped for lunch, I got to fill up my water bottle with a bit of Lake Manapouri, SWEET!

- In the Fellowship of the Ring, at the end of the movie, when Boromir tries to take the ring from Frodo/when Merry and Pippin get captured by orcs/when Frodo and Sam leave for Mordor by themselves.... that was all filmed at Lake Manipouri. This Is Awesome. Basically, New Zealand = Middle Earth (plus Pandora, plus Ferngully).

Since we had been moving so fast, we got to Rainbow Reach at 2pm... meaning that 1)the last section of the track only took us six hours (instead of eight) and 2) Alan could take the 3pm shuttle (instead of the 5pm shuttle) to get back to the car and then pick us all up. Total Success! While waiting, we all just lay around on the grass in the sunshine. Man, that sunshine was so glorious. Honestly, the weather for the whole weekend was seriously perfect... we had looked up the weekend forecast before leaving Dunedin and it said that it would be raining, windy, and cold and so we had all prepared ourselves for crazy weather conditions but instead, we totally lucked out and got the best weather ever!!

We headed back to Dunedin (I got to drive for part of the way... Driving on the left side of the road YESSSS), took showers, and then Alan, Gray, and I went to this kebab place in town for dinner that SO DELICIOUS! Annnnd after that, Alan and I watched some Lord of the Rings because 1) we are in New Zealand and 2) Dylan has all the extended versions YESSSSS.

Really really really great weekend. Kepler Track was SO SICK.

I am So Pumped for next week/semester break because I'm going with friends to do two more Great Walks - Routeburn Track (up in Mount Aspiring National Park) and Abel Tasman Track (on the northwest part of the South Island)... It Will Be Awesome.

On the more regular side of life, I have some homework for this week and a paper due Wednesday (slash tomorrow)... Sweet Life/I heart the library.