The Land of the Purple Hills
(aka, lupine. You know, it’s a flower)
How can I describe the Kepler track? And where should I begin? The rain, the cliffs, the mountains (aka, the ups and downs), the wind, the huts, the long hours of hiking…?
Brief outline:
Day 1: leave car at parking lot-walk to boat dock-take ‘water taxi’ across lake (this cut off 2 hr 30 min from our hike)-walk up really steep hill for like five hours-walk above bush line (basically all the trees suddenly disappear and get replaced by scrub and sun)-get to hut [Luxmore] and laze around.
(Our forms of entertainment basically consisted of what we could come up with, our book [Midnighters: Blue Noon] and Quidditch. Incase you’re wondering, no, we didn’t have broomsticks. It’s a card game. So, we also played 20 Questions, Guess my four letter word, Guess my word based off of one word hints [whatever] and the question game)
Day 2: laze around hut for a day (and go over to the cave, which was dark and small and if you wanted to see the whole thing you had to crawl through small spaces…scary)
Day 3: Hike to next hut [Iris Burn]-go up steep hill for about an hour-go up and down hills for another hour-stop at emergency shelter [for really bad weather] and rest-walk for two mores to next emergency shelter and eat a brief lunch-hike for three hours done very painful slope-get to hut and collapse…and it was raining. And windy. And foggy.
(Our food supply was sort of on the worrisome side, at first. In the end, it turned out we did have enough food, but some of us were questioning that. The thing was, however, that even though we had food, it wasn’t necessarily good food. I mean, it was good food, but our options were getting really slim. Crackers almost gone. A lot of the dried fruit gone. It probably helped that at some point we went and rationed the food for each day.)
Day 4: laze around hut for a day and recover (headed out to the waterfall, which was really cool, but we couldn’t stay long because of the horrid sand flies [bit like mosquitoes]. We also went to a river and hung out there for a while)
Day 5: Hike to next hut [M]-nice flat walk basically-pass the Great Slip of 18 [rock avalanche, wiped out half the path]-get to hut very easily-sit on the beach for a while and read
Day 6: Hike out-yet again, very flat-however, ends in a rough, rocky, hot, unshaded by trees path that was not fun. I wasn’t wearing shoes, so my feet were seriously burned by the experience.
Little note on day 3. I stayed up late that night writing and there was a very large group of Italians (I believe). I’m fairly certain they were from different groups, but still all spoke Italian, fancy that. But they started singing, which was kind of cool.
Something about bunks. So, we’re not camping, but we’re not in a hotel or anything. Thin mattress and you’re sleeping bag. And other people in the room (on this trip at least 10 or 20 other people) moving and snoring etc. sigh.
Something about culture. In the US, everyone speaks English. In New Zealand, everyone speaks English. The difference is that in NZ, when they’re talking to each other (which we saw a lot of on this hike), they speak their own language. It was so weird to walk into a room stuffed with talking people and be able to say, “I have no idea what anyone’s saying. Although, it’s accepted that if you talk to someone else, you begin at least by talking in English. Because everyone speak English.
That’s mostly it for the Kepler, but for you die-heart Lord of the Rings fans, there is a brief program by MEE!!! and company.
Welcome to the unexpected revival of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!!
There’s unfortunately very little to tell. On the Kepler track (day 6) there was an overhead shot filmed. This was the shot for the swamp Frodo, Sam and Gollum make their way across to avoid the orc traveling on the main road. For exact instructions to the scene, please continue: The Two Towers…
So, we hiked through the swamp, so I can’t be positive about this, but I think there was some digital effects to that scene. I’m not sure the swamp was truly that big and there was a lot of random bits of forest and a large lake getting in the way of the swampyness, so what did they do with those? Maybe they just left them in because that brings me to the third point, which is that it was not that foggy. They could have just gotten it on a foggy day, but I doubt it.
As for the scenes actually in the swamp. That was not here. If you tried to walk anywhere in the swamp, you’d sink up to your knees at least. That is, if you didn’t drown. Those scenes, if my sources are correct, were filmed in the parking lot outside the filming studio in Wellington. Yeah, whatever.
Thank you for listening to this final program of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode on Milford Sound and its inability to meet the Lord of the Rings standards, despite what some people of the company thought. Thank you and good evening.
