Kepler Day One

The sun comes out after two days of rain and four days of ominous threatening skies. Somehow, perhaps due to the earthquake chaos in Christchurch, we manage to snag a free WiFi connection at our campsite in Te Anau. I spend the morning doing some writing and catching up on eMails while Jenn walks over to the iSite to get the scoop on hiking in this area. She returns with yet another stack of pamphlets and her brow furrowed announcing that the people on the South Island "Suck. "They are all crabby and unhelpful. I'm ready to go back to the friendly North Island."

Te Anau is our introduction to New Zealand's Fiordlands — a vast and remote wilderness filled with mountains, rock, ice, lakes, forests and grasslands. The best way to explore this area is to do some of the many Great Walks. Here in Te Anau, the big trek is the Kepler Track. Normally a 3-4 day hike, we decide to tackle two sections of it on two different days.

After lunch at the campsite (we are the only camper van on the hill as everyone else has moved on) we drive out to the Rainbow Reach and do a three hour hike to the Moturau and the Shallow Bay huts and then back. You can stay at either one of these huts if you are doing the whole hike, but arrangements and payment must be done beforehand. Again, like everything here, it's not cheap.

The Kepler is a steady hike and the trail is well maintained. We cross two suspension bridges and walk along the river.







Several scenes from The Lord of the Rings movies were shot here, including the "Dead Marshes" scenes. Sunlight stretches down through the canopy and the forest is filled with greens of all shades from the thick mosses covering the trees and forest floor.














We talk as we walk. After three days of straight driving around the East Coast and the Catlins, we're feeling ungrounded and have questions about how we're traveling. Are we trying to do too much? How did we lose our flow? We talk about what we think best centres us and how we can adapt our camper lifestyle to ensure we don't get here again — less driving, more exploring, staying in one place for longer periods, setting an alarm to get us up earlier (somehow the camper coaxes us to sleep longer and longer). Both of us are experiencing a bit of a lost feeling, filled with doubt and questions about who we are and where we're going — not what we came on this trip to find. But, maybe we need to be lost a bit in order to find ourselves again. Or find something new.







Walking helps to lift those feelings and get us grounded again. We stop for a snack at the Moturau Hut and get a view of the mountains and our first taste of the regions notorious sandflies. They seem to be a lot like Canadian black flies, small and annoying little biters.














The Shallow Bay Hut is empty and with no one around (including the sandflies) it's a quick change and into the lake for a swim before heading back.