Wakatipu area offers many short and longer walks of all grades, from mountain tops climbs to lakeside strolls, all with spectacular views. Having few days spare we decided to dwell on the beauty of the area while doing little walking and having lot of time for admiring and resting.
Remote wilderness, long river valleys, high mountains, majestic glaciers, clear alpine lakes in a New Zealand’s third largest national park. It’s hikers paradise with large number of short and long hikes offering breath-taking range of landscapes.
Kahurangi National Park is the New Zealand’s second-largest national park. In the Maori language, Kahurangi means ‘treasured possession’, which explains its diversity of land forms, native plants and unique species of birds. Much of the area is untracked wilderness with exceptional landscapes, the oldest rocks, shafts and sinkholes, remote river gorges, alpine herb fields and tussock plateaus.
Acclaimed as one of the best one day walks in New Zealand, the Tongariro Alpine crossing attracts many tourists. On a good-weather day there can be as many as 2 thousands people walking the trail, majority starting at the Mangatepopo Car Park on the west side.
The morning sun did not wake us up, but only because it was hidden behind the trees. The day ahead, however, looked promising. Most importantly it was not raining in the morning, and we had a lot of things to do. We ate breakfast in our tent, and then we started sorting out our parcel, rationing the nuts, packing and repacking.
It was nice and good to wake up in the cabin. We ate a light breakfast, packed up, cleaned up, and we waited for the opening of a nearby store. At that moment we also found out that we were not alone at the campsite, because two men working in the nearby forests were staying at the campsite during the season.
Ritsem is quite a big tourist centre and there were many people here, so we had a challenging task in the kitchen this morning to prepare scrambled eggs, which we planned for today. Today we had a boat crossing to the other side of the Áhkájávrre Lake. The Sun was shining from the very morning and it promised a beautiful day ahead. The boat was leaving after 11, so we managed to have a coffee in the hostel beforehand.
After a few days of break, we returned to walking and finally we got onto the E1 path! We left the campsite quite late, as we had to repack, pack our food supplies and change our way of packing the bags. In the end, we decided to have a coffee as well, as it was already time for it. In Abisko we bought one pair of walking poles, Marcin, after talking to other walkers became convinced to them, and decided to try it. We walked with sticks, one for each, and we both quickly got used to them, and we both agreed that it was a good purchase.
Sometimes days turn out completely unexpected. We packed up in the rain falling on our heads. We walked a bit through the villages, then along the E6, stopping at bus stops to drink and eat something. Although it rained most of the time, we were lucky, and we managed to prepare and eat dinner in the only weather window on that day.
The previous day we dried everything nicely, only so that today we could pack everting in the rain, all wet, but this is life. We had our backpacks loaded with food, so we moved slowly on. It was raining constantly, so we could not even stop for a coffee because we couldn’t find any shelters.
