We awoke the next morning with rain drops daunting us from the outside of our tent. I said a little prayer before I crawled out of my bag that the rain was only in my head, but alas it was not..... Soon after we all arose the sky just began to pour....
Awesome tramping weather....
But regardless of the weather we knew that we were going to do the track, so as soon as the rain subsided in the tiniest bit we packed up our tents and were on our way. The trail was very much rain forest interspersed with random views of the rushing beautiful river, surrounded by amazing mountains. However, we were not about to be as lucky as we had desired, the rain returned about 45 minutes after we set out and it did not let up for the entirety of the hike.... It was probably the most miserable hike I have ever had to do yet simply because I was soaked completely to the bone, and on top of that I was having the weirdest allergy attack and my runny nose only got worse with the rain. I felt so bad that this was the first trip that we took Lena on and it got completely rained out. I hoped that she wasn't suffering and hating me too much!
Oh the good old days when we were still dry....
And then the rain began...
Still raining....
Still raining...
The suspension bridges were SO COOL on this trip, except the fact that the rain made them super cold and when holding on to them while crossing over all of our fingers completely froze.
The supposedly seven hour hike turned into about 4.5 hours because we were practically running the entire time in an attempt to make our misery come to an end as quickly as possible. And of course it was just our luck that as we were about twenty minutes away from the hut the sun finally decided to show itself and it began to warm up. Lena and I were so elated to finally be in the hut but we were frozen solid to the point that we couldn't even unzip our own back packs to get out our dry clothes. And another pleasant surprise of mine was that ALL of the things in my bag had gotten completely soaked from the rain. Even my sleeping bag was damp. So I basically immediately changed into my swimsuit in the hut, hung up all my wet clothing and ran to the hot pools to de-thaw my frozen body. The hot pools could not have been any better and could not have been more appreciated than they were by everyone on that day. There were four of them, all of different temperatures, and they were big enough for all of us to comfortably sit in them totally submerged. With a sandwich in hand, relaxing in the hot pools, taking in the mountains around us, I could not have been happier at that one moment in time...We were even lucky enough to witness an avalanche on the nearby mountain while we became prunes in the sulfur pools. Epic day to say the least.
Welcome Flatts Hut!
Drying everything....
Beautiful views, amazing hot pools, wonderful company... Couldn't ask for more.
Surprisingly enough we did eventually end up over heating after an hour or two in the pools and we all headed back to the hut for dinner. We also made friends with the volunteer hut warden who was the epitome of the type of person you expect to live in New Zealand. He moved here several months ago and has been hopping around the two islands with random jobs/volunteer positions/rock climbing and hiking around the entire country. He had an entertaining sense of humor and was full of some crazy stories. "You guys want to kill a possum tonight", the lead in to one of our conversations... haha.
During our dinner preparations we all attempted to dry our clothes over the fire and on the stove and of course I was the only idiot that left their poly pro pants right on the stove for way too long and they completely burnt away.... After laughing at myself and reprimanding myself for being a total retard I enjoyed my dinner and then ran back to the hot pools to take in the clear New Zealand night sky as much as I could. I swear, sometimes I have to remind myself that my life is real and that I'm not living in some sort of a movie. The company was great the rest of the night, as we all stayed up late sharing life stories, jokes, and at one point we all turned our torches off and Andrew finally showcased some of his opera skills for us. It was beautiful. We had some great sleep that night in the warmth of the hut....
The next morning the sun was actually out and we set out on our journey back as quickly as possible so that we wouldn't loose the warmth of the sun. And now that we could actually see and enjoy the scenery around us the hike was 100000X more enjoyable.
Lunch break!
Amazing mountains...
The water was such a range of beautiful, different colors, you never get tired of staring at it...
Though the weather was beautiful for almost the entire return trip we did hit some rain near the end of our trek, and Andrew unfortunately sprained his ankle only about thirty minutes away from the car park, but other than that we all made it back to the car safely. We set back for home again praying that our little doughnut wouldn't fail us and that it would get us back safely. After getting mooned by the boys' car as it passed us we stopped in Hokitika for some well deserved fish 'n chips!
OMM NOM NOM NOM
We continued to pray for our tire and experienced a terrifying blizzard of snow at the top of Arthur's Pass that we managed to get through by driving no faster than 10km/hour. We all exhaled an enormous sigh of relief once we were over the pass and knew that we were really going to be okay. The biggest relief was had however once we finally actually returned to Ilam and unloaded all of our bags out of the car. Our doughnut tire miraculously traveled about 700km. Don't ask me how but I am so happy that it did. Hopefully we don't have a trip with as many car adventures as that last one... Either way, good times were had as per usual in New Zealand :)
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