Mud,Sandflies & Kiwis (and my small part in a big drama)

Have now been in Stewart Island for 2.5 weeks and completed 2 major walking tracks. to say that these were challenging for me would be an understatement.  The tracks are administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC) who also look after the huts I stayed in each night. The tramps involved many steep sections which as i was initially carrying 3 weeks worth of food I found physically exhausting, initially I was also suffering from blisters but these have all resolved themselves now. At the end of each day there was a hut to stay in after walking for anywhere between 5 and 10 hours. Stewart Island mud is legendary I am now an expert mud grader, from the sticky slippery stuff right through to the watery variety. From inches deep right up to above my knees in places. The huts are basic but clean from 6 to 24 bunks with plastic covered mattresses for you to place your sleeping bag on, a cold water tap and a long drop toilet some metres away from the hut. The path to one toilet was flooded and another was up a hill with 50 steps (I counted) to reach it! Some days i walked with other trampers and others I walked on my own. I made friends with Jan (pronounced Yun) a dutch- kiwi guy and we walked together for 4 days, I was slower than him so I left earlier in the morning and he caught me up later and we would walk together until we got to a hill then he would go ahead and then wait for me. Some huts carried advertising for a local helicopter co, if the walk was proving more difficult than expected to give them a call and for $500 or more they would come and get you. Initially a voice in my head kept telling me that there would be no shame in giving up but I did persevere and I'm glad I did. 

Sand flies did not tend to annoy on the track but could be very troublesome at the huts. At one hut there were so many inside that we decided we needed to kill them all before going to sleep, so all 10 of us went on a sand fly killing spree until they were all gone. We then realised that we all needed to pee before going to bed and therefore agreed that rather than all going out individually and opening and shutting the door each time thus letting squadrons more inside we all went outside at the same time all disappeared into the bushes and all went inside again at the same time thus only opening and shutting the door twice.

Besides the mud and the sand flies the other topic of conversation was spotting kiwis. On Stewart Island Kiwi have evolved to come out during the day and it was every ones hope of seeing at least one, I spotted 5 during the 18 days and even got a photo of one. I have been in NZ for over 40 years and this is the first time I have seen Kiwi in the wild. One guy from the Chech Republic saw a kiwi walking towards him on the track so he stood as still as he could and the kiwi walked right up to him and pecked his boot then went on its way, how special was that.

I met many interesting people on the walks. One of which was a Norwegian called Anders. I had spent 3 days and 2 nights on my own having seen no one at all and thought that this would be the 3rd night on my own when Anders staggered into the hut and fell onto a seat. Anders is 34, 130 lb and 191cm tall, a large man but he was absolutely exhausted. He had been taken by plane to another hut a few days before to photograph Kiwi, the hut was remote and the plane had landed on the beach. On the day the plane was due to come back to get him  the weather had worsened and gale force winds were blowing, convinced the plane would be unable to land in those conditions he had decided to walk to the hut where I was staying in the hope of catching a water taxi,  problem was he had 50kgs of luggage. He took 6.5 hours to walk 15.5 kms to the hut, this was the flattest track on the island and i had walked the same track in both directions the week before in 6 hours but with only a day pack. Anders readily admitted that he was not very fit and had got half way and decided to leave half his luggage on the track and return to get it. The luggage he carried with him was 25 kg of photographic equipment and he left behind all his clothes and food etc. There was no way he could have completed the return trip to collect the rest of his gear in the condition he was in. I heated him up one of my meals and once he had recovered enough we both returned to collect the rest of his luggage arriving back at the hut just prior to midnight. As there was no cell phone coverage at the hut I was unable to notify anyone of where Anders was. The next day I set off for the next hut in terrible conditions, with gale force winds, a very wet muddy and hilly track and it took me nearly 10 hours to get to the next hut, still unable to get any message out. The day after that I arrive back in Oban the only town on Stewart Island and when I went to report Anders whereabouts I learnt that he had been the centre of a Search and Rescue operation. The plane had managed to land on the beach where he was supposed to be picked up but to find no sign of Anders and he had left no message in the hut book to advise that he'd walked to another hut. Fearing the worst they had people searching the beach for miles. Due to the weather the water taxis could not reach the hut he was at to check that and the only helicopter on the island was too small to fly in those conditions so they had to call out another larger helicopter from the Mainland. Eventually they found him at the hut and brought him back to Oban. He is not very popular with the authorities, due to the high cost of searching for him! Being a small community i overheard people talking in the supermarket about the man who had gone missing and that he had been found. If only I could have got phone reception I could have prevented a very expensive search and rescue operation.

So that's my little bit of drama to report. Still have some small walks to do on the Island so have extended my stay until Friday will then cross over to the mainland and start my northwards walk from Bluff . So will probably post another report in about a weeks time.