The Routeburn is a gorgeous track that I highly recommend if you want a do-able and beautiful experience. If you're into extreme then I guess you could run it but we were happy to take the slow road up, down and round about.
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Ready to start from the Glenorchy end of the track.
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| 5 mins into the walk and we were in love with the place!! |
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| One of the MANY swing bridges that we crossed...one of us loved these and the other hated them |
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| We climbed higher and higher |
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The scenery was truly breathtaking, the water was turquoise...gorgeous.
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So day 1, we travelled from Queenstown to the Glenorchy end of the Routeburn, which is located in the Mt Aspiring National Park in New Zealand, and we walked up to the Routeburn Falls Hut which is ironically close to the Routeburn Falls...go figure! We walked past the Routeburn Flats hut which was about 3 hours walk in and from there it's a fairly stiff climb upto the Routeburn Falls Hut located a couple of k's away. We thought, pah...easy-ish walk. Oh HELL NO !! I personally LOVE walking but I'd had about enough by the time we seen the hut through the trees. I let out a squeal of delight when I saw the hut..truly a sight for tired legs.
One thing I learnt quickly on day 1 was that one walkers idea of not far is my idea of far. Every person we'd meet going in the opposite direction would ask - a) how far to their exit (our entrance) and b) tell us that the hut wasn't far.
Not far meant 3 hours still.
We had a few stops along the way and had pre-agreed to take our time and enjoy the journey...which we did. Hence the track notes had a walking time of 3-4 hours for this leg of the journey and we took 5-6 hours.
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| The first non-swing bridge and Miss 16 loved it |
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| Lunch time, this was the only part of the track that looked like this, the rest was all rainforest or ferns. |
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| OMG guess what that is between the trees...YIP the Routeburn Falls Hut. |
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This was the uber comfy bunk bed inside the sleeping quaters. We loved these beds.
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