Tararuas are bloody mind blowing.
A lot of ascending today! Reached just over 1400m and had some amazing views (which is apparently quite lucky) of the Tararuas and all the way down to the river below.
For most of the day we were walking along the ridges so for the first time since hiking on the trail, we were completely exposed but thankfully we had quite good weather. It was a bit rainy to start with and a really cold wind carried on throughout the day but we dropped into mossy fairytale forest for some of the time too so we had chances to dry off a little. We stopped in a two man hut called 'Dracophyllum Hut' for lunch - it's a bright orange little tin with just two beds and a hand crafted wooden ladder up to the top bunk... we'd have probably stayed there if we didn't want to make it to the last hut in time for Christmas.
We carried on for another two hours beating the predicted timings overall by over an hour and arrived at the hut just in time to miss the heavy rain that came in in the afternoon.
Even though the three of us plus Christina, Marvin and Paul were all in the tiny hut together, it was so cold! We had hung all of our wet clothes up from the nails in the ceiling and there was hardly any space to move so I had a little nap until the men had lit the fire and warmed the room up a bit. We played a few games of cards and listened to a few Christmas songs (I've been trying to learnt the Twelve Days of Christmas lyrics and I think I've cracked it!
I learned today that Father Christmas doesn't even exist for the Austrians! They celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th only and they call it 'Holy Night' instead of Christmas.. the children do get presents but apparently from the 'Christ child' instead of Santa! How nuts is that!
Anyway- it means it's their Christmas Day tomorrow so maybe we'll feel like we're celebrating twice. Very excited for our Christmas meal tomorrow evening... we're eating our dehydrated meals on Boxing Day evening and having our special breakfast on Christmas Day... we figured that was probably the easiest way to celebrate.
(At least it feels like Christmas up here though- it's bloody freezing!
No comments:
Post a Comment