Day 76 - the south island

Picton —-> Camp Bay campsite

Boat + 27km walk

We were beginning life on the South Island with the most beautiful day imaginable. Our first three days were going to be walking along the Queen Charlotte track, a very agreeable well-trodden trail through the Marlborough Sounds.

Our day began with an hours boat ride from Picton to Ship’s Cove, the ferry driver-come-tour guide spending most of that complaining about the non-native trees cluttering the landscape.

We landed and set off on a beautifully graded track. We were amongst heaps of other walkers, by far the most of any track to date. The majority of whom were not on the TA and were not ultralight hikers:

We climbed up through the bush until we were high above the sound, the climb harder than we anticipated. Pretty puffed out we blamed the five days of stuffing our faces in Wellington plus the heat on why we were both producing copious amounts of sweat.

The views from the get go were just incredible, the water impeccably calm against the lush green bush - this wasn’t like anywhere in NZ I’d seen so far.

The track undulated for the next 20km or so, and we stopped for breaks at beaches and at the many wonderfully placed picnic tables along the track.

Our campsite for the night was at Camps Bay, and having only started waking at 10.30am, we didn’t arrive until gone 6pm. We had both desperately wanted to wash the day’s sweat off with a swim but the sun had already retreated making the water slightly less appealing. The lack of sun plus the several large sting rays chilling in the shallows of the bay.

We settled for a baby wipe shower, cooked dinner and walked around the bay out onto a jetty to watch the sunset.

A pretty incredible day to start off the South Island, the weather was going to stay like this for the next two months right?!