Stone Store & Kemp House, KeriKeri

Stone Store & Kemp House, KeriKeri

Colville General Store and Beyond

Colville General Store

Owlcatraz

Owlcatraz

Wrong Way

Wrong Way

CookieGenerally I’m not a fan of flip-floppin’ around on trails, I like to walk in one direction from start to finish, it makes doing my animated maps of the route much easier that way ;) But we have two friends coming out to walk with us for 2 weeks and we want to make sure those weeks are impressive ones so we’ve decided to break our continuous walk south. It’s not like it’s been un-broken so far, we did much shifting around in the North Island to take in or avoid bits of New Zealand we did or didn’t want to see along the official trail.

So the plan is to get a bus from Greymouth all the way down the west coast and over the main divide to meet Ollie & Nico in Queenstown. After steak eating and supermarket shopping we’ll get the bus back part of the way to Makarora, where we’ll throw the boys straight into the deep end by hiking the Gillespie Pass track and then Rabbit Pass track together, resupply at Wanaka via Rasberry Creek bus, then continue on over the Cascade Saddle to Glenorchy. If we have any days spare there’s another route I’d like to do on our way back to Queenstown called the Five Passes, but we’ll see how we get on!

I’m slightly concerned about getting Nicky over Rabbit Pass, the ‘Waterfall Face’ sounds exactly like the sort of thing she wouldn’t like, but I’m hoping the added peer pressure will spear her on, either that or we’ll drug her A-Team stylie and carry her up ;) Only joking, we do have Plan B’s, C’s and D’s if needed.

Bus to Makarora, Setting off in the drizzle

Setting off to cross the Makarora River in drizzle

Heading to Raspberry Creek

Heading to Raspberry Creek

Yey! Home Please Jeeves!

Yey! Home Please Jeeves!

NickyWoop woop! It’s the bus! Got the Kiwis? Check! Got the Americans ? Check! Got the Brits ? Check! And the one with the funny accent? Check! ( Get in the bus Nico ).

Invercargill, the Jewel of New Zealand

Cookie eating Walkers Crisps in Invercargill