Steward Island

Stewart Island,  24-2-2014

            Stewart Island was SO COOL. We heard that it’s always raining there, and it’s notoriously muddy trail, and the sand flies (biting gnats that are far more irritating than mosquitoes) are everywhere. It’s all true. The trail was very muddy, up to our knees in spots. It rained almost the whole time, with bouts of hail every few hours. I didn’t have a problem with the sandflies but probably only because it was too windy for them to be out and about. I’m talking gale force winds at times, to the point where I stayed well away from any steep slopes I could have blown off of and I wasn’t just being ridiculous.

            It was also my second most favorite hike I’ve ever done; the first being my very first Search And Rescue, which also happened to be in the pouring rain. (Maybe something’s wrong with me.) Perhaps it was the company, since we were with friends from the blueberry farm. Claudia and Michaela, from Austria, Vijay, from France, and Markus, from Germany.

            Markus and Vijay decided not to stay in the huts, so those poor souls were stuck in tents out in the rain, hail, and wind. We tried to get them into the common room of the hut the first night, but the warden was unwelcoming, unfriendly, and refused to let them inside if they weren’t sleeping there that night. So we cooked for them using the kitchen in the hut, hung their soaked clothes by the fire, and hung out together outside. Yep, outside. Luckily the rain quit for a little bit, and we had a good time anyways, despite the warden. We played Moron (that’s the clean version of the name), a card game, on the porch. We were out of the rain but surrounded by clouds of sandflies. We covered up. Then the wind picked up so we battled the wind to keep the cards in place, played a few more rounds, then called it quits. It was too windy , and dark anyways.

            We were all tired, and we knew once we went to bed we wouldn’t wake up until daylight, so instead of going to bed and waking up in the middle of the night to look for kiwi birds, we decided to go walk the trail to the ridge and back right then.

            Sidebar: Kiwis are local native birds to New Zealand. They’re flightless birds, nocturnal, with long-ish legs and a long, straw like beak that they poke into the ground looking for bugs. They’re a relative of the Moa bird of New Zealand, also flightless, which is now extinct. They were hunted out by the first people who arrived here. Interestingly, the Moa bird has solid bones, not hollow bones as most birds have, which suggests that they never had the ability to fly.

            Because the kiwi-bird is nocturnal it’s fairly uncommon to see one. That, and they’re supposedly very shy. We walked two or three kilometers up to the top of the ridge and didn’t see a thing. It was very windy, and the trail was the muddiest we’d seen yet, but it was still fun. We tried to walk as quietly as we could for a while, but we were slipping and sliding so much that between the squelching mud and us laughing, I don’t think we were that quiet. We had some spectacular near-misses and fantastic saves, which prompted Markus to comment, “Even if we do not see a kiwi, it was worth it just for this.”

            At the top of the ridge the bush gave way to grass, with a sporadic bout of thorny thistle bush popping up here and there. The ridge wound down to very large rocks that the Tasman Sea crashed into. This was one of those spots where I retreated back into the bush (I say “bush” and not “woods” because “bush” really is a much more appropriate term for the vegetation here) so as not to be blown down onto the rocks.

            We couldn’t do much exploring around the ridge, so we just headed back down the trail. We had given up all hope of seeing a kiwi bird so unlike the walk up, we didn’t even try to be quiet. We walked freely and spread apart, talking at normal volume.  Us girls were a little ways ahead, and the boys behind, when I heard Luke make a strange noise. I looked back and saw all the boys stopped and shining their flashlights around into the woods. I knew right away they’d probably heard a kiwi, and Luke had made that noise to get my attention without having to yell. So Michaela, Claudia, and I quickly crept back to the boys as quickly and quietly as we could, hoping to see a kiwi-bird.

            “There was one just there!” Luke said. “And they’re huge! At least this big!” He gestured a size of a small dog,

            “There, it is that noise again!” said Markus. “Like what we heard the first time, and we saw a kiwi.”

            We all looked around.

            “There!” someone said. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear something shuffling around in the underbrush.

            “Let’s all turn off our lights for a while,” someone else said.

So we did. And we waited. We could hear it moving around, getting closer. It sounded as large as a deer, but I think that must have been it shuffling its large feet through the leaves and poking for bugs.

Closer and closer it came, until it sounded like it was only a meter away. Someone said, “okay!” and we all turned our lights back on (on low, of course; kiwis have very sensitive eyes).

The kiwi-bird was only a few feet in front of us. We all stood still, huddled together and afraid to move because we didn’t want to scare it away. We carefully grabbed for our cameras as it came closer. Maybe it just didn’t care we were there, but it walked right up to us. We were all in disbelief as we watched it walk up and peck the ground right by Luke’s feet. Then it pecked between Luke’s toes! None of us could believe it! It even stayed there long enough for us to get a few pictures. But, finding no bugs between his toes, it moved around him and shuffled on behind us. We watched it go behind some fallen logs and then we started talking again.

“I can’t believe it!” I said. “That was so cool!”

“It poked my feet!” Luke said.

“It poked your feet!” Markus said. “But I think that was a different one,” he continued. “The first one we saw was much bigger.”

The one we had just seen was about the size of your average house cat, which was only about 2/3 the size of what Luke had indicated earlier.

We all talked excitedly for a minute, still watching the kiwi-bird as he popped in and out of view, until someone suggested we turn off our lights again. Sure, why not?

We did, and we listened. The kiwi-bird sounded like it was indeed coming back towards us again, from where it was behind us on our right. Then I heard more rustling behind us to our left, a little further away. And more rustling directly in front of us, where the boys had seen the big one! We waited a few moments longer, letting one get close again, then we turned our lights back on. The same kiwi-bird was back near us again, poking his beak deep into the ground. I looked around for the other kiwi-birds but saw nothing. One was cool enough, though. We watched it until it disappeared again then we made our way back to the hut. I can’t believe how incredibly lucky we got.

It turned out the hut was only a hundred meters down the trail, so we got back and stood around for a few minutes, still totally geeked that we’d seen a kiwi-bird. But we were still very tired, so we only lingered a few minutes and then we all went to bed.

The next morning we slept in, or at least we tried to. Someone was rude enough to stomp through the hut, rattle the doors on both sides of the room, and then leave them open. Within minutes we were all attacked by sandflies. I couldn’t believe someone could be so idiotic and inconsiderate, especially after we had all gotten lectured on not leaving the doors open by the warden when we arrived. I know we weren’t the only ones.

Still, I was not willing to get up yet, so I buried my head in the hood of my sleeping bag to hide from the sandflies and tried to get back to sleep. Then I heard a voice say, “You all have to get up. We have to clean for the next people.”

What?

“What time is it?” someone asked groggily. I think it was the person in the bunk above me.

“Practically noon!” the warden responded sharply. Then she stomped out. I peered out of my sleeping bag and watched her leave. She rattled the doors again and again left them open.  I was appalled. How rude! Especially from the very person who lectured everyone not to leave the doors open!

“What time is it?” I asked to anyone in general once she had left.

“9:30,” someone answered. Not even halfway through the morning, and that was considered close to noon?

We took our time getting up. We took our time packing up. Then we took our time making breakfast in the kitchen. We tried to go wake Vijay and Markus up, but the warden turned Michaela around. She said we couldn’t go down there, and besides, there was no need because she’d already talked to them and explained that they weren’t allowed at or near the hut.

Again, HOW RUDE! But at least I knew they were awake. It really wasn’t within the power of the warden to tell us we couldn’t go see our friends, and when she tried to stop us again we told her as nicely as we could how offended we were by her behavior. Then we cooked breakfast for everyone and brought it down to the tent-site.

I’ve never been so disimpressed with anyone in visitor services in my life. We even filed formal complaints about her to the Department of Conservation office (the people who employ the rangers and manage the volunteers) in Oban, the town of Stewart Island. It’s not something I eagerly did, but I felt that whoever was managing volunteers needed to know just how awful that warden was making people’s experience.

Nevertheless, our trip was not ruined. We still had fun at the hut with the horrible warden, and the hut the next night was fantastic. Overall our experience was great.

The trail was wet but beautiful still. We only did the short loop but there is a bigger loop that goes around the entire island. It’s a seven day trek and we didn’t have time for it, but if I ever get back to New Zealand someday I’ll be sure to do the longer one. And I’ll probably fly in and out again.

One of the best parts of the whole experience was the way we got in and out. We had flown in and in spite of the wind (which was actually dying down), we were able to fly out. We even got the same pilot. He looked like he was the same age as me, which is only 25, but he was an excellent pilot. Even in the wind he landed the little eight person plane very smoothly, both times.

Leaving the island was a bit more thrilling than leaving the mainland, because once we took off we immediately banked hard. I looked out my window and looked straight down to the ground. It was so cool! Even when we straightened out I still kept my eyes peeled below us. The straight between Stewart Island and the South Island has the highest concentration of Great White Sharks in the world, and supposedly you can see them easily from the plane, so I was keeping my eyes peeled. We weren’t that high, so I was hopeful. But alas, I did not see any sharks on either flight. We still took a lot of pictures, because the view was amazing.

Also, on the flight back Michaela got to sit in the co-pilot seat! So of course we took a million pictures of that. She entertained us all by announcing that snacks and drinks would be served in twenty minutes, and we all knew it was only a fifteen minute flight. Then she welcomed us back to the mainland, in her Austrian accent, and said she hoped we enjoyed our flight. It was pretty funny.

Afterwards we all got pizza together at Hell’s Pizza in Invercargil. They make a very good pizza for a very good price. We were all happy with it. Then the time came when we all had to say our goodbyes and go our separate ways. We had all already made plans for what to do next, and unfortunately not together. I was just glad we could make the trip to Stewart Island work. It was really fun.