If you look between the town's hotels & restaurants you can see the Wakatipu lake on which the town is located on.
One visit at the supermarket and one night at a place called Kinloch and we started the Rees-Dart trek, another trek in our "trekking season".
Day 1 -
The trek began with one sore foot and dark sky (yes, it was raining again). After putting a bandage we got rid of one problem, and left only with the dark sky.
About an hour walk later we came across a big river with one sign-pole on the bank we stood on and another one on the opposite bank. We understood we couldn't continue the walk without crossing this wide deep river. Shoes were taken off and we started marching into the freezing water. It took us 10 minutes of screams and shaking to start feeling our feet again.
The trek continued through a sequence of flats and swamps for another 2 hours until entering the bush. One good thing about the Rees-Dart trek is that you never walk too much time in a bush. The trek always breaks the bush-walk with wide open flats the gives spectacular views of the valley and the mountains.
3 hours later we started to smell a burning wood and knew that we were not far from the first hut. 20 minutes later we were already cooking our dinner in the hut.
Day 2 -
We woke up and look through the window and saw the cloudy sky. We started walking hoping the weather will improve, 1 hour later all the clouds were gone and we had the most blue clear sky we had so far in New Zealand.
The trek climbed steeply (we had to use our hands!) up to the Rees Saddle and from there it descends to the Dart valley.
Without a single cloud in the sky, the views from the Rees saddle and the Dart valley were beautiful.
After 7 hours of walk we arrived to the Dart hut, in which we stayed the next 2 nights.
Day 3 -
We left most of our gear in the hut and took only water, food and camera and started to walk towards the Cascade Saddle. The first 15 minutes was walking in a bush, and from that point until the Cascade Saddle there were no more trees blocking the surrounding views. The weather was fantastic and we enjoyed every minute of walk that day. The trek was hard (crossing rivers, walking on snow, steep uphills and few places the trek collapsed and we had to improvise our way up). After 5 hours of intensive walk we finally got to the saddle and enjoyed the beautiful views from it.
After a short nap we started going back to the hut the same way we climbed.
This day is definitely one of our most favorite days in New Zealand.
Day 4 -
The day started with breathtaking experience: Roi woke up early and went to the toilets. On the way there he suddenly saw a small furry animal with a big tail and big eyes near one of the trees. The weird thing was that the animal didn't run, but froze and didn't move. On the way back from the toilets and animal was still at the same place and than we realized that it was trapped. Later, one of the walkers told us that this animal is opossum. Half hour later, the hut warden woke up, stretched his muscles, washed his teeth, took a hammer in one hand, a bucket in the other and went to the trapped opossum. One hammer hit to the head and all the opossum's worries were gone... After the murder the warden started ripping the opossum's fur with his bare hands and put it in the bucket. "I can make 100$ from this!" the warden said. And with this sight we started walking our 4Th day. That day's walk was quite nice easy walk along the pale blue water of the Dart river. Most of the walk was through a wide open green flats. The sky was cloudy but luckily the rain arrived only at the evening.
Day 5 -
The day started with heavy rain and all we cared about was getting to the end of the trek as far as we could. Slowly the rain began to stop. Almost 4 hours later we got to the end of the trek but we weren't alone. A well trained battalions of sandflies were expecting us. There were so many of them that it was difficult to see the sky. No matter how much sandflies repellent we used they didn't stop biting us. After 2 hours of bloodshed our bus finally arrived.
Despite the sandflies, the Rees-Dart trek is our favorite trek so far.
The following day we decided to relax our mind and muscles using New Zealand's most famous invention:
Our next posts will be on the Routeburn & Caples treks (which we completed last week), the Milford trek (which we completed yesterday) and the Kepler trek (which we are starting tomorrow).
B.T.W : happy Hanuka (we celebrated it by eating doughnuts on the Milford trek...), and happy birthday to Eti, dad (yosi) and mom (billy).
