We travelled to the start of the Queen Charlotte Track on the mail boat, which delivers mail to the remote houses on the Marlborough Sounds as often there are no road connections. It was a beautifully sunny day and the skipper/postman gave us a great commentary about life in the sounds and pointed out various wildlife including New Zealand Fur Seals relaxing in the sun on the pontoons of the local salmon farm! We arrived at the start point, Ship Cove, about 4pm and began the hike to the first campsite at Resolution Bay.
The hike only took us an hour and we arrived at a lovely campsite right on a small bay (Schoolhouse Bay). We dropped our packs to have a look around and immediately a flightless, chicken-type bird flew out of the bushes and began to investigate our packs with no fear whatsoever! We got the tent out and were in the process of putting it up when we heard a frantic rustling behind us and turned to find the bird making off with our bananas in a plastic bag! We later learned the bird is a Wika bird and they are notorious thieves....we saw many of them along the trail. (P.S....we did get our bananas back, albeit slightly pecked!).
The following day we woke up to drizzle and spent most of the day hiking through the rain. Fortunately the trail is mostly through forested hillsides so we were slightly protected from the rain. Despite the wet conditions we had some fabulous views over the sounds as we were hiking pretty high up. We managed 22km and at that night's campsite (Camp Bay), we got the tent up in the rain as quickly as possible and headed five minutes down a track to a very welcome bar where we feasted on panini, chips and several beers, and chatted to our new hiker friend Amelie, a meteorolgist from Cambridge (who spends a good percentage of her work year at an antartic research station!).
The next day was also pretty wet, and also very steep! We were mostly hiking along the ridgeline of the mountains and we slowed to the pace of tortoises whilst going uphill! We eventually made it to a deserted ridgetop campsite (Black Rock) where we spent a chilly night. Waking to sun the next morning, we fully appreciated our position.....on top of the ridge, with wonderful views of the sounds either side and no-one else around.
(JH - NB. During the night I woke frequently to what seemed like the sound of scratching under the tent! At one point I even thought there was some animal in the tent with us... as usual Sarah slept thru all this! Next morning as I was packing the tent away I found numerous holes under the ground sheet of the tent and several squashed Ciccadas! It seemed they emerge from the ground at night and several had got their timing rather badly wrong... so as we rolled over in the nighth we were squashing these horrible insects under our tent... quite dusgusting, and annoying that the Ciccadas find yet another way of causing problems! I have to say that when you try to get away from it all and enjoy nature at its best.... nature can be quite annoying and unpleasant at times!)
We hiked in the glorious sunshine taking in the breathtaking views until we came to Mistletoe Bay. We were only about 12km from the end point of the trail, and about 9km from the next trail campsite but our feet were pretty tired and we had run out of water. There was a turning off the QCT which advertised a private campsite and we hiked down a really steep slope to emerge into a grassy campsite right by Mistletoe Bay. All thoughts of wildcamping that night went out the window and we pitched up and spent a couple of hours lying in the sun! We even managed to have a 2 minute shower ($2 does not get you very long under the jet!).
Cooking dinner that night we got chatting to a couple who had been camping at the site for a week and had been spending their time out on their boat fishing. Dave and Megan were really good company and even gave us a couple of glasses of their bubbly Pinot Noir wine, yum! We were joined a bit later by the managers of the campsite, each with bottle in hand, and spent a lovely evening drinking and chatting. another highlight was wandering up the drive to see glow-worms on the bank twinkling like little stars.
The next day was just as sunny, and after an invite from Dave and Megan to visit them at home when we arrive in Nelson, we set off. After an easy 12km, we arrived at the end of the trail, feeling very pleased with ourselves.
We didn't really want to pay the $38 each to get the water taxi back to Picton so we decided to hitch a lift. We were picked up by a minibus pulling a trailer full of kayaks......the local tour company had just finished a day's work and were heading back to their warehouse with the boats. They were extremely generous and gave us tea, sandwiches and beer back at the warehouse whilst they cleaned the boats off then gave us a lift back to our hostel in Picton!
We are spending today in Picton relaxing our aching legs and feet and we are hoping to go to Blenheim tomorrow to sample some of Marlborough's finest wines during a vineyard tour.
