Day one: The Heaphy track is the longest of the great walks, 78km meandering across the Kahurangi ranges, from the east coast of northern South Island, to the rugged west coast. As we travelled to the start following our Christmas break in Nelson, the task at hand loomed into view!
One more stroll on the sheltered beaches of Golden Bay and we were ready for the walk to begin...
... It began with rain, lots of it! Someone told us that on the west coast they measure rain in meters not mm; I don't think we quite had a meter of rain, but we must have got close. The clouds cleared just before the sun went down for a brief view of our surroundings:
Day two: With a slightly shorter walk today, we decided to leave the packs in the hut and tramp back the way we had come the previous day, to see some of the views that had been hiding under the clouds...
... the mountain ranges and the colour of the trees was beautiful.
We spent a lot of day two in dense forest with the sound of yesterday's water everywhere.
The trees were typically 'Kiwi' with mosses and lichen sprouting from all over.
Out of the trees and onto high alpine tussocks, then the rain was back!
Some ropey rope bridges to cross:
Our hut that night was small and cosy, particularly when everyone staying there had hung all their wet gear out to dry. The damp did not improve our smell!
Day three: Guess what? It rained all day. The only time we could get the camera out was late in the afternoon after we had finished our tramp and reached the hut. We dropped off the packs and headed out to survey the landscape.
The hut was the only sign of human impact for as far as the eye could see.
As the sun started to drop, this photo gives a sense of the dark clouds and the promise of yet more rain!
The sunset was very beautiful though...
... we could see right down to the mouth of the Heaphy river (shrouded in mist towards the left of the photo), this was to be our destination the following day.
Day four: If we thought we'd had rain already, the west coast was about to show us what rain really was! However, as we were walking through dense rainforest, this merely added to the experience.
The trees towered over us, strangling each other to reach the light! It was a tangle of every green you could imagine!
The air itself was laden with precipitation making for beautiful close ups!
Finally we reached our hut (a nearly brand new one) in a fantastic location.
It seemed the clouds and rain were behind us and the west coast beaches were ready to be explored.
These beaches were insane! Rugged, beautiful, isolation.
Day five: What we haven't mentioned yet is that due to the inaccessibility of the mountain range the Heaphy track crosses, the two ends of the track are nearly 500km apart. As a result we needed to get a two-seater fixed wing flight to take us back to our van. We could only get picked up at 11.30am, so we had to start walking at 6am to ensure we coved the 5hour walk to the end of the trail:
The early morning light was wonderful as we shouldered our packs for the final time and stepped up the pace.
A few rivers to cross on rather wobbly bridges:
We were kept in rhythm by the constant thundering of the ocean on our left, and as always the views in every direction were out of this world.
The blue sky was most welcome as we trudged through the sand.
With Mel's pace-setting we reached the end of the tramp in record time, and were soon seeing our achievement from a whole new angle - the small patch of grass on the left above the river mouth is the Heaphy hut where we spent out last night (we reached this considerably quicker in the plane than we had on foot).
A great view back along the coast line:
Our little plane was the smallest we have ever had a ride in:- after 5 days without a shower we had felt very sorry for our pilot! He assured us that it is just an occupational hazard. We had had an incredible adventure.
