Short ascent to begin with,walking through beech forest, passing numerous streams and waterfalls. The clouds began to lift and we saw small breaks of blue sky as we passed through "The Orchard". As the track approached Earland Falls, the sound of the cascading falls became an almost deafening roar. There are two routes past the Falls - the normal route and the flood route. Today it was still passable by the normal route, but the jet-force of wind and spray from the falls nearly swept us off our feet!. Thankfully I still had my rain jacket on, so only my bottom half was saturated (but not for long, thanks to my quick-dry Macpac trousers!) A very impressive sight and one of the highlights of the Track.
We marched on to Lake Howden Hut, spoke to the ranger there and discovered that the Key Summit track junction was another 20 minutes further on. The sun had now decided to make an appearance and Lake Howden looked picture postcard perfect.
Then it was down, down and more down to The Divide - 45 minutes - arriving just before 1.30pm. Time for a quick clean of the boots and a snack before the "Tracknet" bus picked us up - on time. We arrived in Te Anau at 2.30 to find that we had a 2 hour stop-over there. We ate and napped until 4.30 until the next bus arrived from The Divide to pick us up. We were very surprised to find the Polish Walking Poles and the Kiwi contingent on the bus - Team United Nations had been reunited!!!
We drove around the eastern shoreline of Lake Wakitapu and arrived back in Queenstown just after 7pm, just in time for a celebratory drink to toast the end of a Great NZ Walk
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