2 MARCH 2018:

After a day hike to Roy’s glacier in Mt. Aspiring

National Park, we returned to the parking lot around half past five. Mt. Aspiring National Park is located on the central West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, about an hour away from the town of Wanaka. March in the Southern Hemisphere is comparable to our late- August-early-September “Indian summer” in the States. Another important side note regarding terminology: hiking is referred to most commonly as “tramping” in New Zealand. If you are partaking in any sort of long hike or backpacking trip in the New Zealand wilderness, you may be referred to as a “tramper”, and it is not an insult.

It had been getting dark around 7:45 PM, so we figured our best bet was to trek to Aspiring Hut while we still had some daylight. Shortly after we began our walk, fog rolled into the valley and was soon accompanied by torrential rains. Our morale was still in good shape as we waded through upwards of twenty river-crossings in inappropriate footwear and accepted our fate of indefinitely being human raisins.

Upon our arrival at Aspiring Hut, it became apparent that the hut was already occupied by approximately 17 eleven-year-old girls and a handful of tightly wound birthday party chaperones. It was not looking good for our “cozy night in the hut” that had been giving us our will to live for the entire journey. As we were weighing the pros and cons of trying to hike out in the dark, an older gentleman infiltrated our huddle and informed us that he was the hut warden.

He made sure to notify us that there was only room for four more in the hut. We had a group of five. The warden continued to tell us that there was a covered picnic table one-hundred yards away where the other people who failed to plan ahead would be sleeping for the evening. We could join them for a small fee of five New Zealand Dollars–which equates to about three dollars and twenty-five cents in the States.

We were cold and wet and relatively out of options, so we shelled out the five dollars each and lugged our soggy bodies over to the covered picnic table where we found twelve other unfortunate souls from our university.

One of the great parts about being young and unprepared is that you tend to still have the ability to laugh at your circumstances and remain relatively un- jaded. You also have the ability to drink large quantities of rum and coke and play cards until 4 AM.

We slept in sardine formation under the picnic table before peeling ourselves off the wooden platform and trekking out of the valley the following morning. After a couple days, our bodies finally dried out and we were able to once again, join regular society.

3 APRIL 2018:

We made our way up to the North end of the South Island to the paradise: Nelson, New Zealand. After stocking up on peanut butter, tortillas and dark chocolate, we were ready to begin our three day excursion through Abel Tasman National Park. The track was a mixture of traversing through extremely dense rainforest and walking on golden beaches for kilometers at a time.

New Zealand is located almost directly below the hole in the Ozone Layer, making for an intense ultraviolet experience. After a full day of exploring the New Zealand bush under the Southern Hemisphere sun, we set up camp at the Anchorage hut. The hut and neighboring campsites are nestled in the foliage with several small sand paths leading to the bay. We immediately began exploring the shoreline, jumping in the ocean to watch the sunset and rinse off the day. It took only a few moments for us to notice the starfish of all shapes and sizes resting on the seafloor.

The following morning we got up and drank coffee in silence as we watched the sunrise and wondered how we ended up in such a perfect place. After a few hours of drinking coffee, it was time to resume our journey. We started the day by taking a “low-tide only track”, having no idea when low-tide was or what would happen if the tide began creeping in on us. Spoiler alert— as we made our way through the low-tide route, the tide was eerily moving in. We waded through thigh deep waters filled with stingrays and quicksand. Luckily we made it through that section of the track without getting swept to sea or dragged to the core of the earth.

We were in no rush for the remainder of the day and took our time finding our next camp, Onetahuti Bay. We were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves on the beach almost completely alone, with only one father-son kayak duo camping down the beach from us. We still had a few hours of daylight when we arrived, so naturally we spent the afternoon lounging around on the shore and eating the finest peanut butter tortillas ever seen South of the Equator.

In the morning, we continued up the coast to Awaroa Bay where Simon, our water taxi driver, was scheduled to pick us up. A popular way to complete the Abel Tasman Coast Track is to hike the trail all the way up the coastline and then instead of walking back the same way you came, taking a water taxi and seeing the track from a different perspective. There is no greater bliss than zooming around on a boat, salt spray hitting your face while being chauffeured by a kiwi man named Simon.

Simon was a fabulous tour guide, he took us into some enchanting sea coves only accessible by a catamaran, schooner, kayak, canoe or of course water taxi. When we returned to our starting point, Simon pulled onto the boat ramp and hooked our boat up to a John Deere tractor, then began driving us around in the boat on land with virtually no communication about what was happening. A small disclaimer— this sort of lack of communication is not incredibly uncommon in New Zealand. Not knowing what is going on around you from time to time is a cornerstone element in the New Zealand tourist experience.

The New Zealand Department of Conservation is a government agency devoted to preserving and sharing quintessential New Zealand natural spaces and national historic heritage. The Department of Conservation carries out a number of conservation projects, routine trail maintenance, and facilitates the backcountry hut system on both islands.

The Department of Conservation looks after over 900 rustic cabins that ornament the country’s backpacking tracks at varying levels of remoteness. The general format of each hut is dependent on location and accessibility. Typically, the more difficult and obscure the trail is, the smaller the hut will be because it does not require the same carrying capacity as a hut on a heavily trafficked route.