Te Araroa : Albert Town to Queenstown

KM this section : 103
KM completed : 2671

On the trail around Lake Wanaka - I love that hiker-shaped tree.

From Albert Town it is a short walk to Wanaka, on the side of the lake that shares its name.  Seems like a nice place, plenty of bars, I wish I could stay... I do hang around long enough to do some shopping and actually send a food parcel, my first - well, it is a ten day stretch out of Queenstown without any shops, so having this box of food waiting for me at a lodge along the way will be good.

I walk around Lake Wanaka for some time, easy going on a cycle track, easy enough that there are lots of people here.  It can't last though, the last five kilometres of the day being a tough climb up to Fern Burn Hut.  Wow, a modern hut, I actually use one of the passes I've been carrying as this one is not free.  A couple of guys here, doing things rather differently to me - one has a huge amount of food, including tins, fresh fruit and veg (I have enough for one more night, and two days, so not much).  The other has big paper books, including a hardbound A4 pad he is using for writing...

Not quite so flat up here.

The hard walking continues, this is bleak upland country and the way is along stony ridges or up and down steep slopes, bare but for grassy tussocks.  The verdant forests of North Island seem a long way away (good!).  Plan is for just seventeen kilometres today, but... maybe a year or two ago it would have been pretty bad here, but now a steady stream of trampers have beaten out a walkable path, and I reach my planned stop at not long after 5pm.  Too early to stop, so I make it up and over yet another saddle to camp next to the Arrow river.

Restored cottage in Macetown.

Turns out this was a good thing to do.  The guide has four hours from the hut to Macetown, an abandoned mining town now inhabited only by sandflies.  You can see the old spoil heaps all around, and a couple of restored stone buildings... and it took a little over four hours.  Then the guide has another four hours to Arrowtown - which I really don't think is possible.  It's a nice walk, up to a saddle again, then down a well graded path, very well travelled, you can tell Queenstown is near.  At the saddle is a sign reading 'Arrowtown 2 hours - Macetown 2 hours' - that doesn't mean it is four from one to the other guys...  OK, last stretch is easy cycle track, but even here the guide estimate is very sketchy, five and a half hours for nearly thirty kilometres?  Good thing I am only going as far as Frankton today, a nice little suburb where I camp and eat massive pizza.  Then just seven kilometres to the centre next day, that counts as a day off.

Saddle between Macetown and Arrowtown.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.