Sunday, October 20, 2013

Nelson Lakes and heading home...

We had to get back to Picton to catch the ferry and another lot of bad weather was hitting the west coast – so the last few days of the holiday we headed east and decided to try our luck with weather at St Arnaud and try to do a walk in Nelson Lakes. The clouds were pretty low, so instead of heading up high we walked along the east side of the lake through some beautiful beech forests to the Lakehead Hut where we had lunch. This is part of the Te Araroa - the New Zealand version of Lands End to John O'Groats (or for the American's reading this - the Pacific Crest Trail). I think my mid-life crisis might have to be walking the South Island section of the Te Araroa track... anyone interested in joining me - only 1300 km or so..? 

Just as we were getting back to St Arnaud the rain started...  Story of the holidays – a few hours of nice weather followed by a lot of rain....very frustrating as you couldn’t plan to do anything for more than a couple of hours, but I think we managed to make the most of the nice spells. We will definitely have to go back and revisit the west coast again and do some of the more adventurous stuff....may be we just have to wait until there is a good weather window and then just go...

Lake Rotoiti on Saturday morning when we had to catch the ferry home

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