Next we headed to Nelson, a really cool coastal town on the north of the island. While there, I received an email from Peter Gray, my friend Emma’s father. Peter is awesome. I DJ’d his 50th birthday party. Anyway, the email said that his brother lived in Nelson and that we should stop through and look him up. Since I happened to be in Nelson, I called his brother Steven up and that night we were over their house for dinner. It was lovely and Steven helped us reroute our trip and gave us lots of advice. We had been planning on doing the Heaphy track, which is one of New Zealand’s “great walks” which are the hyped up hikes very popular with tourists. It was going to cost like $250 per person between all the transport and trail fees. Just to walk through the woods. So instead, by Steven’s suggestion, we headed onto the mountains just outside Nelson on the Pelorous track. Basically you walk from Nelson out to the Pelorous river and the track ends at some beautiful swimming holes. He said it would be basically empty and we didnt need a tent since there are DOC (dept of conservation) huts that are really nice. He drove us out to the trailhead the next morning and offered to pick us up at the end. Thanks so much Steven!

From Nelson

The trail was really fantastic. Completely empty. So well maintained. The huts are little cabins with beds, mattresses, some cookware, a wood stove, and they leave you axes to use! There is a fire ban pretty much everywhere outside, but I was amazed that they not only let you but encourage you to make fires in the huts. Imagine the liability lawsuits in the US if we left axes at public huts. We did manage to get lost though on the first night. We went down a mountain bike path and ended next to an intersection where the signs were all hidden behind a giant boulder. We did spot a pole up on the hillside though so we headed towards it, unknowingly having taken a wrong turn. That led us up and over a sizable peak, and not having a map, we decided to just continue, hoping we were in the right place. I kind of knew we weren’t but we just kept going, which meant hiking up and over another bigger, steeper peak that we didnt see was coming due to the dark. Im kind of shocked we didnt get hurt climbing up and down that much in the dark with headlamps. But anyway, we finally made it over and ended up at Dew Lakes completely exhausted and bit unsure of what to do. We built a fire and collapsed around it for the night. Luckily, it was quite warm and not that windy there and we managed to stay dry from our sleeping mats. Thank god it wasnt raining, we would have been screwed. So I think the detour was around 7 miles out of the way including 2 peaks and we had to do it again the next morning to get back. That made our supposedly fairly easy short hike turn into a much more intense and tiring one but I was pretty happy in the end that it went that way. So in the end, Steven picked us up again and they fed us delicious meat pie cooked by his son-in-law. yum.

From Nelson

In general, I’d highly recommend avoiding the great walks because they are so expensive and crowded. There are so many beautiful spots around New Zealand and a lot of the south island is covered in these huts. You can stay for $5 a night in a lot of them, and no one is really checking. That said, I’m sure the great walks are so expensive and crowded for a reason.