This warning sign in Te Anau is spot on; keas really are delinquents
The little town of Te Anau is home to the Kepler Track and Fiordland National Park headquarters, and stocking up for the Kepler was pretty easy, as it's one of the more mollycoddled walks in the country, with huge, luxurious huts, gas cookers, plenty of beds and a very high standard of track. I was going to take four days over the walk – about as long as you can take, but I wasn't in a hurry – so I sorted out all my tramping gear, bought what I needed, and, after exploring Te Anau and its various points of interest, I headed up the road to the first DOC campsite I came to – Ten Mile Bush – and camped. I never really got to see Ten Mile Bush because it was dark when I arrived, but when I woke up and saw that it was little more than a normal rest area, I popped up to the next one, Henry Creek, and spent Saturday 28th unwinding and packing in preparation for the walk.
Henry Creek was a divine stop. Te Anau town is on the southernmost tip of Lake Te Anau, and up the eastern side of the lake are quite a few DOC campsites, all primitive, but all situated in beautiful scenery. Crashing out on the lakeside, sunbathing and swimming, reading and sleeping... it's a hard life, and the perfect preparation for a long walk.
Across the lake is Te Anau, the pretty Fiordland town where the round trip of the Kepler Track starts and finishes
The weather was excellent, which surprised me as Fiordland is renowned for its serious rain (Milford Sound, for example, gets between 7m and 9m of rain per year, depending on which book you read, but whatever the figure, that's a hell of a lot of rain), and by the time I had to leave early on Sunday morning for Te Anau, I was about as ready for the tramp as I was going to get.
I'd chosen the 67km Kepler Track as a gentle introduction to real tramping; the Mueller Hut and Ball Shelter were both 'real' tramps, but neither required carrying serious provisions (although we managed to pack a fair bit in for Christmas, of course). The Kepler is one of the eight Great Walks, which are slightly more expensive than other walks (or much more expensive in the case of the Milford and Routeburn) but which are reckoned to be the classic Kiwi walks. Of course, all this is marketing claptrap, and it's a way of focussing tourists on those tracks that DOC has put money into maintaining, but they're all well worth doing in some way.
The Kepler Track
Mt Luxmore Hut
The Kepler Track is a round trip, beginning and ending just down the road from Te Anau, so I parked in the car park and set off early on Sunday, pack bulging and muscles as yet pleasantly ache-free. Day 1 took me from Te Anau to Mt Luxmore Hut, climbing up the mountain along 14.1km of track. To be honest I found the rainforest rather tedious after a while, but during a stop for lunch at the limestone bluffs about two-thirds up Luxmore, I fell into conversation with another tramper, Jo from Sydney, and we fell in step – even though her's were shorter than mine – and the rest of the day flew by.
We arrived at the hut in early afternoon after breaking through the bush-line to wonderful views that made the long, slow climb worthwhile; we picked out our bunks, and decided to explore the area. The first stop, the Luxmore Cave, was well worth it; the cave is just a big slit in the ground, down which you can crawl with a torch, and before long Jo and I were stuck in pitch darkness, with only a couple of Maglites to guide us.
South Fiord from Mt Luxmore
That's when I remembered the guide on the tour I had take in the Bungle Bungles, who had taken us into one of the Bungle caves, turned off his torch, and made us stand there for about five minutes, while our eyes got used to the gloom. Slightly spooked, we did the same in Luxmore, and sure enough we could see all sorts of strange shapes and shadows from the tiny amount of light seeping in through the cracks; Jo had never experienced it before, and was suitably impressed.
To round off the day and expend our excess energy we decided to hoof up Mt Luxmore itself, as the weather was clear and the views would be stunning. We were right; there, 1471m above sea level, the views over Lake Te Anau to the northeast, towards Mt Aspiring in the north, over Fiordland to the west and to the south, are awe-inspiring. The climb also helped to build up an appetite; pasta, tuna, tomato purée, cayenne pepper and mixed herbs never tasted so good.
Into the Bush
Wild keas in the bush on the Kepler Track
Day 2 was a gorgeous trek through the mountaintops, made all the more beautiful by the continuing good weather. After 18.6km and a seriously steep descent through more rainforest – but this time a rainforest filled with babbling brooks, squawking birds and wonderful waterfalls – I arrived at the next hut, Iris Burn, in time for lunch. This points out one of the delights of easy tracks like the Kepler; the scheduled time for a day's walk is normally five to six hours, but as with most DOC times, I ended up doing them in about three to four hours, so even with a lie in I'd make it to the next hut for lunch, leaving ample time for exploration.
Iris Burn sits in the big glacial valley through which the Iris Burn River flows, and just down from the hut is a powerful waterfall that's created a clear swimming hole that would be perfect if the water wasn't so bloody cold; I went in up to my knees before realising that I couldn't feel my toes any more. The ferocious sandflies were also a bit too hungry for my taste, so I headed back to the hut, where the night culminated in a search for a kiwi, led by the hut warden's husband, but without success; we did, however, get to see lots of glow worms lighting up the forest canopy like the night sky.
Day 3 awoke to cloud covering the mountaintops, which just goes to show what luck I'd had in deciding when to do the track. Ahead of me by a day was a huge group who had met another huge group coming the other way, which meant there had been 76 people in the Iris Burn Hut the night before I arrived; and if I'd been a day later I'd have missed all the views on the mountain path. The 17.2km track from Iris Burn to Motarau Hut was, however, low level, so before long I was tucked up in Motarau Hut on the edges of Lake Manapouri, watching the world go by from under sandfly-proof clothes.
Lake Manapouri
That night, being New Year's Eve, I cracked open the 250ml bottle of port I'd been lugging for the last 50km (how's that for dedication?), and the other English speakers followed suit with a bottle of gin and tonic, a bottle of bourbon and a small bottle of champagne to complete the makeshift bar. We made it through to midnight, when we went out on the veranda and sang 'Auld Lang Syne' at the tops of our voices, much to the bemusement of the Germans in the hut who were seeing 1997 in with some comparatively colourless celebrations of their own.
Day 4, New Year's Day, entailed a rather uneventful 17.1km walk through more forest, before I arrived at the car. The Kepler Track had been pleasant, but it only served to whet my appetite; I now had to find the next challenge.
