The Routeburn Track 27th April to 29th April 2006 We get up very early for the 7am bus ride to the Divide to start the Routeburn Track, all 37km (ish) of it. Our packs are weighing in at around 15kg each and the weather for the first day is overcast but not raining so we have to be thankful for that. We covered about 12km the first day with the highlight being the Erskine falls. The falls are 60m high and we get to walk right beneath them, absolutely beautiful. The route is mostly sub-tropical rainforest up to the first hut (Mackenzie) but we are rewarded with glimpses across the Hollyford Valley. Mackenzie hut is set against a beautiful lake and there's room for about 29 people. As the DOC have removed all the heating, lighting and cooking utensils and materials we have to call all this stuff with us and rely on the old wood fire in the hut. We meet a nice English guy called Tom in the hut as well as a NZ family who are all keen to learn if we do this sort of thing often back in the UK. Come on give us a break, living in London? So we tell them no but we are really enjoying it. It's soup and noodles for dinner and as the light starts to fade we play cards. We are both pretty knackered that night but Stu gets the first use of the decent sleeping bag and, predictably, starts snoring as happy as Larry. Amy realizes she has got the bum end of the deal and her sleeping bag is not up to much, meanwhile Stu is happily snoring away........ At about 3am Stu is awoken by the father of the NZ family. Stu's a little bit startled by this and the guy (ever so politely) asked Stu to roll over onto his side in order to cease the snoring. Apparently he and Amy were the only people Stu was keeping awake (so we are led to believe). Day 2 provides the highlight of the walk as we tramp up to an altitude of 1537m, Conical Hill. We left the rainforest below us and had pretty unobstructed views all the way to the top with hardly a cloud in the sky. One of the highlights of the entire tour so far. We could see all the way out along Hollyford Sound to the Tasman sea and we are told later that apparently they only get a handful of days like this all year at this altitude. How lucky we are. About 15km and 6 hrs later we arrive at the Routeburn falls hut and that night it's Stu's turn to sleep in the naff sleeping bag. As you can imagine as 1000m at the beginning of winter it's pretty cold in what can only be described as a done up cow-shed of a hut. Despite sleeping in a liner inside a sleeping bag and wearing thermals, a T-shirt, a fleece, woolly socks and a hat pulled down right over his face, Stu is still too cold to get any sleep that night. At one stage he even resorts to wrapping his coat around the outside of the sleeping bag and it's still too cold. Day 3 arrives and we are feeling somewhat tired and are glad to finish. Thankfully it's only about 8km and mostly downhill all the way. We walk back into the forest and we glimpse several beautiful mist covered lakes and waterfalls. We arrive at the other end of the walk and await our taxi to Queenstown and back to Te-Anau All the best and keep the messages coming, Lots of Love Stu & Amy.