Day 21: 21/1/13
This morning we were up at 6 as we had to leave for a walk at 7. The lights weren't even on in the toilets or anything yet! Luckily there was enough daylight!
We headed to the Routeburn track where there was a 3 hour summit track walk. Of course it was all uphill!! My legs got really sore for the start and the alcohol caught up with me and loosened out everything in my chest!! So I let them off to the top and I did a bit of it and turned back. I was still walking for about two hours, just at my own pace. Everyone else came back only about 20 minutes later. I had gone up a lot of the summit track anyway so got a lot of the views.
We were nice and quick on the walk so we had time to go to see the Mirror lakes. They were lovely. You could see the reflection of the mountains in the lakes really clearly. We were supposed to see mirror images in other lakes we've been to but it was too cloudy, so finally we saw some!
Afterwards we went to Te Anau. Some people were hopping on and off the bus there so we had about an hour to get lunch and have tea.
We drove to Invercargill then where some people were staying so we pulled up for them to check in. We were staying in Stewart Island. You could stay in either place but you had to pay for the ferry to Stewart island and most people didn't want to pay it.
We drove to Sterling point then which is the Southernmost point on the South Island. There was a signpost there with distances to places and we were closer to the South Pole than the equator!
We got the Ferry from Bluff. It was just us and two German guys from the bus that were going. The ferry was really, really choppy!! It was like a roller coaster ride! It was an hour long. According to Jenny it was worse than doing the canyon swing as that feeling of your stomach being churned was over in a second on the swing! We finally got to Oban on Stewart island without vomiting!!
We had to walk about 10 minutes to the hostel. It was the furthest we have had to walk with our bags in ages!! The guy at reception wasn't the chattiest! We got a room to ourselves and free wifi though, so can't complain!
We went for a walk then around the village which was tiny. The seafront is lovely with lots of little boats anchored there and a beach. There's lots of little houses up in the bush too so it's very scenic! We went to the hotel and treated ourselves to a proper dinner and a few beers!
It was just dusk when we got back to the hostel. The German guys were going for a walk looking for Penguins so I tagged along. We only had to walk to the ferry terminal and you could see some little penguins swimming in from the sea and climbing up the rocks to their burrows for the night. It was very cute although it got hard to see them as the night went on- I could have done with some night vision goggles!!
I went back to the hostel then and had another early night to try and recover!! We're still wrecked!