During the drive out of Queenstown I picked up several hitchhikers. The first was a young Dane, who said that he was in New Zealand tying to find "inner peace". Things were too "fast paced" at home. I asked him where in Denmark he lived, and he said that it was a little island town in the north. "Life's too slow there", he said. At the place I dropped him, on the edge of town, I achieved a enviable hitching feat: the hand-off. There was a German guy hitching right where I dropped the Dane. The Dane got out, the German got in. The latter was looking for a rock climbing site he'd heard about, but didn't know the name of, and didn't have very clear directions to. "It's 'shortly' past the sign for a ski resort" was the only direction he had. I went slowly along, and we did pass a ski resort sign, but no turns after it looked at all promising. Finally after obviously having gone far longer than "shortly", we gave up. I left him off at the side to hitch another ride back to town.
The road to Te Anau is not very exciting. Lots of deforested mountains swarming with either sheep or (farmed) deer. The deer look completely out of place here in these treeless fields. It's kind of disturbing to one's image of New Zealand as a natural paradise, and in that way was interesting to me. The stark reminder driving through most of the country, including the road to Te Anau, that a westernized lifestyle has fundamentally changed the landscape here is important. In general, when entering the many beautiful places in New Zealand I have now seen, I feel just as I do when I enter a national park in the US: here is a tiny little sliver of land (that still dwarfs the individual) that our rather rapacious way of life has packaged and commodified for our consumption. The beauty isn't cheapened by being a commodity, but it certainly is changed.
On arrival in Te Anau, I got set up at my hostel, and quickly made my way to the Kepler track. This is another three day "Great Walk" into the Fiordland. I had toyed with doing its 60km in two days, but then realized that I just wouldn't have time for both it and the trip to Milford. So I chose to just do a day walk. The sections of the trail easy to reach on day walks are simple "walks in the woods". Knowing it would lack the mind-blowing views just made me relax my pace and just enjoy the woodland. The birds were out, so I took the chance to do some birding. On the way, I ran into two people headed in the opposite direction who were just finishing the entire track - a German man and a Scottish woman from Glasgow. They asked about how it would be to hitch, and I told them I would probably be just walking in about an hour, then could give them a ride. They gladly accepted. I continued my walk, which included a beautiful marshy wetland, and headed back. The German, Anders (I think) and the Scot, Hazel (I'm sure...hey, she was cuter) were waiting in the lot. We chatted on the way back about my distant relatives in Scotland, on my father's side several generations back, who our family doesn't really keep in contact with, and about their plans for New Zealand.
I invited them out to dinner, but both ended up having other plans. So I ended up going out to a nice restaurant in Te Anau (my second higher-end meal in a row!) and had a nicely done filo summer squash. I ordered a Burgundy with it (having discovered that I like them from my Napier wine tour), but it turned out to be a really atypical Burgundy, not buttery and full-bodied at all! A little disappointing, but it did complement the meal well, so all was not lost. After dinner I bought a bottle of wine, did a little Internet and drank a glass, then went to bed, anticipating my boat trip the next day.
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