Glenorchy

It seems that Queenstown is the city of coincidental meetings; last night at the holiday park I was walking to my tent and I saw Paulo, the Swiss guy from Arthur's Pass (you can see his picture on an earlier entry)! After talking about where we'd been for the past three weeks, we went out for a beer and then caught a movie at the theater in town. He's a really funny person and it was a good night. It was nice to run into him because it can get a bit overwhelming in a big town like Queenstown if you don't know anyone. I'll have to spend one more night in Queenstown in about 4 days (it's just about unavoidable with the way that the transportation works here), so I'm curious to see who will be the next old acquaintance to show up.

The poor weather continues here, so I'm counting myself lucky that I made it off Stewart Island! Things are forecasted to improve tomorrow so I'm hitting the trail again for the next 4 days. I had planned to do a track called the Rees-Dart, but decided against it because it has a number of river and stream crossings and the water levels are very high now. Instead I'm doing another circuit trip out of Glenorchy that goes through the Greenstone and Caples valleys. I had picked the Rees-Dart because it was more challenging than what I've been doing, but this new option should be just as good; there's a really steep alpine crossing on the Caples side of the track. And, with no tricky water crossings, it seemed like the better choice.

Glenorchy is a very nice small town which I'm sure has great views of the surrounding mountains, but there isn't much to see today. So, three nights on the trail, and I'll be back in Queenstown on Thursday.

-Brian