Blog #3 this time around, the Routeburn Track

We had spent the previous night at Deer Flats in a swarm of sandflies and actually got quite cold, so at this point we were a little cold and kind of nervous.  Luckily it stayed cold enough that we left the sandflies around this sign, and we were walking enough that we warmed up quite well also.  
At this point we had been walking (mostly uphill in her defense) for about 45 minutes and Mae had pawned off the tent, all the clothes, and all the food to me.  Her bag had our sleeping bags and ground pads, it actually had a negative weight as if it was filled with helium.  Her smile is very genuine, mine ??????
We dropped our bags at a short, one hour side route.  It brought us up here to Key Summit which was well worth the walk.   The next picture was taken from up here as well, it looked like these two pictures 360 degrees around us.  Unfortunately when we set up our tents that night, Bobby and I discovered we no longer had our wallets.  After all our precautions in the country, the one place we thought would be perfectly safe got us, we should have hidden our bags.  

This is Earland Falls about 10 km from the start of the walk.  It is 170 m high and falls into a perfectly clear pool.  
These mountain daisies were growing wild everywhere.  The pedals are much narrower than a normal daisy, and there were many more of them, they were stunning.
Most of the walk to this point was through pretty thick bush, but every time you got a view it was something like this.  It was hard to put the camera away all along the track.
From a point up above the bush you got a glimpse of Milford Sound and the Tasman Sea beyond it.  

The two pictures above are of Lake Mckenzie.  Our campsite was basically right behind us, just back off the shore of the lake.  The water was intensely green and clear, it was a great place to spend a couple nights.
We were running out of fuel and in spite of a fire ban, we risked it.  Our fire was in the middle of the rocky shore and we really struggled to find anything dry enough to burn.  Somehow we pulled off a fire kept alight with tiny twigs, that put out enough heat to cook potatoes, rice, and curry sauce in three different pans.  We had just finished dinner and some self-righteous locals came up yelling, "The ranger's on his way!  Do you speak English?  He's going to evict you!"  We put out the fire, looking and feeling a little guilty, ate dinner, cleaned up the fire ring and ashes and ran into the ranger walking up to the campsite.  He casually asked if it was out (didn't want to check it), told us not to do it again, and delivered another fuel tank to our tent the next morning.  "No drama" as he said. 

The next day we walked to the top of the saddle, about 8 km in one direction all above tree line.  It was incredibly alive and green for alpine, and just as startling as the previous day.  
The track itself was really impressive.  On many occasions you would find yourself walking up or down beautiful stone staircases.  The DOC does a great job with trail maintenance. 
This big "split rock" was a short walk from our campsite.  It was a huge rock, split cleanly in two.  You can't quite see in this picture but there are full grown trees growing out of the six inches of soil and moss on the top of the rock.  It was a 40 km walk in total, and even though we lost our wallets, it was well worth it.

Cheers,

Johnny