Whew. Another busy week! After the craziness that was St. Paddy's, I spent a lot of time reading in the library and also cooked some zucchini lasagna for my flat (thanks for the recipe, Grandma!) I'm still enjoying my classes and actually have 2 essays to crank out this week which I'm of course dreading. Aye. This weekend I went with the Tramping Club to Fiordland National Park which is on the southwest part of the South Island. We bussed out there on Friday evening and stayed in a "shelter" which was really just a roof over a little bit of pavement. We were sandwiched in, which helped us stay warm, and we got started on our separate trips in the morning.
I was with 8 others (lead by Jono, a Kiwi tramper extraordinaire) and the plan was to go on a track up to Key Summit and then follow the ridge line and eventually go down to McKellar Hut (irony?) When we got to Key Summit, the clouds and fog made it difficult to see, but they soon lifted and gave a nice view of some snow-capped peaks and valleys below. We then went off-track and walked atop the peaks for the whole day. Just up and down following the mountain line and had beautiful views on all sides the entire time! Everywhere we looked were more peaks, blue skies, floaty clouds, and rivers wayyyy down below. Apparently it rains a lot in this part of New Zealand, but it was not the case this weekend! We were really lucky to have such great weather.
We descended a peak that was extremely steep and made it down to the campsite after about 10 hours of tramping. We set up a "tent" and then boiled water for tea and pasta. The stars soon came out and there were so many. (Orion as we know it is upside down here and they call it "The Pot" because his belt and sword look like a handle and pot. We tried to tell Jono about Orion and he just didn't get it. Hmph). Anyway, we looked at the stars and played some games of Mafia before Katie spotted what she thought was a black cat going through my pack. Nope, it wasn't a cat...in fact it was a possum! They are black in NZ instead of the weird tan color and this guy wouldn't leave us alone! Jono chased it, Mike threw things at it, we ran it up a few trees. Nothing worked. I still slept outside in the "tent" with Jono, Mike, and Carrie and our sleep was only disturbed by my gasp from a dream of four possums attacking us.
Today we hiked about 4 hours and took our time through mossy forests and grassy fields before we got back to the bus stop. By that time we were all sore from the constant movement and stretching and massages were oh so good =) I had a really nice talk with Rachel on the bus ride home and ate the last of the granola bars homemade by me. I just had the most amazing shower and am now going to sleep. Hopefully for a long time.
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