Te Waipounamu - The Routeburn Track

Early start - Breakfast from Ferg Bakery - their world famous breakfast rolls - egg and bacon with homemade tomato chutney - yummy!
Bus pickup at 8am - Jack scored the front seat thanks to careful manoeuvring.45 min drive to Glenorchy where a couple disembarked to head to the Greenstone Track trail-head. We arrived at the Routeburn Shelter just after 10am and after the obligatory photos at the trail-head, we set off at 10.15 over the first of 6 suspension bridges for the day

We followed the well-marked path, walking through beech forest, crossing many streams forded by wooden bridges.
We walked at a slow but steady pace to account for Jack's back injury. He was carrying 9kg - a little more than he was advised to....
I was carrying 14kg, but that included 3L of water, which I soon discovered was not necessary in a country where water is in such abundance.
After 6. 5 km and 2 and a half hours - lunch at Routeburn Flats Hut

The section from Flats to the Falls was a fairly steep ascent -300m in a little over an hour. Not too much joy during that hour - struggled with the pack weight - maybe not enough pack-carrying or hiking over the past week. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself - it was very steep.....
We arrived at the Falls Hut at 2.20pm. The skies looked ominous so we opted to walk up to the Falls, had a good look around and took some photos before the heavens opened up.

We used our own new gas stove to make dinner instead of the hut facilities as we wanted to work out how many meals/snacks we would be able to make using the one small gas cylinder. We sat down and chatted to another couple who we had been passing on the track today - a Polish couple on a 2 week holiday away from their three young sons for the first time. We nicknamed them "The Walking Poles".
Dinner was Backcountry Cuisine - "Chicken a la King" - which was OK, followed by Apricot Crumble.The safety briefing by the Hut Warden brought news of more rain for tomorrow. He then issued a challenge to all hut dwellers - to identify 20 or more Christmas greetings adorned on a wall-hanging decorating one of the walls of the communal room. We formed a Team United Nations comprising us, the Walking poles and two NZ couples sitting at the next table. After the Hut Warden collected the walk passes, the lists were checked and our group correctly identified 25 greetings - we won!!! and shared the prize of a family sized block of chocolate.