Veronica's blog: Stewart Island- the ideal way to spend Xmas

Xmas feels very far away now. We are already into February. Is this what happens when you get older?...time flies.

We didn't hang around after we had worked our last day before Santas entree. No, we shot straight down to Dunners for one night and then onto Invercargill. The next day we took a 6- seater hard wing plane to Stewart Island. It was just Charlie and I and the pilot. Pretty luxerious. The views were amazing and it was a great way to see the parts of the island which we would conquer the next 6 days.

Stewart Island is awesome!! Bush, bush and bush...ok, quite a few beaches as well. We landed on Mason Bay during low tide. My backpack felt very heavy although it was only 18 kg and the first km to the hut were painful. I thought "Suck it up, you have almost another week to go of this". My body just needed to get used to the weight. Compared to most other trampers, we didn't have that heavy backpacks. We had been pretty tight when we packed for xmas and we had cut out all booze and xmas turkey/ham/pickled herring. In the backpacks, we had made sure to have lots of chocolate. It was a good move to have a chocolate treat (mostly Whittaker's Almond Gold) at the end of the day.

We came into a nice routine pretty quickly: porridge for breakkie, a 6-10 hr walk every day with plenty of snack stops and time to take photos of rimus and lancewood (when CB held the camera). Usually we saw lots of birds, but hardly any humans. Most days we only met one person and then you took the time to have a 10 min chat. I managed to bump into a guy from MWH and I sort of recognised him, but wasn't sure. It wasn't until we reached the hut he had been staying the previous night, that I saw his name in the hut book. He didn't recognise me either, so we were even. Most nights we cooked some kind of curry and brown rice. I never felt like we ate boring food and when we came back to the mainland and camped in the van, we even kept on cooking the same food as we had made in the bush.Hrm, maybe it just shows our lack of imagination.

As I said, there were heaps of birds. We saw yellow crowned parakeet, a Kaka, lots f footprints from penguins and ONE KIWI!!! Charlie was becoming increasingly frustrated that we had not seen any kiwi yet after 3 days. Mason Bay, where we spent the first night is the most common place to see them. We heard them everywhere, going nuts in the bush with all kinds of crazy noises, however we never saw any. On Xmas Day at about 2 pm it happened...we saw one. Charlie who has got big ears (literally) heard some screaching sound amongst the trees and like in the army he ordered me to dive down. My 18 kg backpack was almost pushing my face into the mud, but I managed to catch a glimpse of this wonderful creature who was rootling around in the leaves within 5 m from us. The little kiwi was never worried about us, but he slowly moved away to more fertile soil with more insects and worms to be eaten further away. His badger like bum was so cute and the way he walked made me want to cuddle up to him. I don't think he would have been very keen.

Sand dunes in Mason Bay

Gunera Hamiltoniae- the second specimen of its kind in the world. This was a male and the female version was a few kms south in another Bay. How they every hook up is a mystery??

Foot prints from kiwis

Well well well, that was our Xmas gift! We couldn't have asked for a better one. The fact that we saw bottle nose dolphins playing in the water the same day was just a bonus! S.I is full of cool animals. We almost tripped over a few seals a number of occasions. Charlie almost shat his pants by surprise when he happened to almost trip over one. I got a good laugh.

One of many photos Charlie took of rimu trees. This fellow stood in front of the East Ruggady Hut where we stayed on Xmas eve.

S.I is famous for the muddy tracks, but I think we were pretty lucky. We only had one day of rain, hence the tracks were relatively dry. Of course we had muddy feet but nothing like the photos my friends Julian, Caspar, Claudia et al had taken when they did the track the incredibly rainy summer of 2004/05.

The best entertainment we got was to read the hut books with lots of random comments. One guy from England had written a whole page complaining on the track conditions and the fact that DOC were not maintaining the tracks properly. Did this guy expect a state highway or something? With that much track and extreme weather conditions you pretty much have to count on having large logs fallen over the track and sections with slimy mud which will send you face first. Bring it on!!! That is what I love with the island.

Many hunters mentioned that they had seen lots of white tails. For me this meant that they had seen some specimen of the only harmful spider living in NZ. That' not really worth mentioning in the hut book I thought. Later we realised that a white tails is a type of deer whith a white tail, which is rather common on the island. They hang around on the beeches eating sea weed and although we saw plenty of footprints, we never saw any in the flesh. Mayb it was because we are so noisy when we go thorugh the bush.

There are many stunning parts of the island. The locations of all the huts are ace! I hope that they never allow any further exploitation of the area. I like the fact that you can't get there very easily.