Day 134-135: Arrowtown, Macetown, Cowboy Camping

First, a few pictures of hitching back to Queenstown and on to Arrowtown.

Those little dots up at the top of the mountain are people parasailing down.

And an obligatory picture of a quaint little church in Arrowtown, before we started hiking.

But I know what you are all here for:  pictures of Mountains.  Am I right?

The thing to remember is that we had started this day more than 150km away, on a completely different trail.  We only arrived in Arrowtown around 4, which gave us maybe 3 hours before it got dark up in the mountains.

Which did not dim our high spirits whatsoever.  The views were still impressive, and we had managed to avoid spending a night in a hostel in Queenstown surrounded by German Teenagers.

Our shadows were getting longer, but we still had a bit of time.

That little saddle was our first goal for the day:  The high point on the right is called Big Hill.

Our second goal was Macetown--a former mining village, now completely abandoned. It's somewhere down in this valley.

And a good thing we were heading down, we were about to run out of sunlight.

So a few things about that night.  1.  Macetown doesn't really exist as a 'town'.  It's just a collection of abandoned buildings and old foundations.  Which means 2.  There's not even a hut to stay in.  So 3. Molly and I, having sent our tent back to the States, would have to camp out in the open.  Unless 4. You find this strange corrugated structure on a derelict farmstead to sleep under.  5.  Which happens to have sections just long enough for a person in a sleeping bag to fit into.  6.  Which wasn't that comfortable, really, but 7.  Your lovely wife had snuck a large bottle of hard cider to drink for dinner, which was nice.

So here's our camp for the night.

And molly curled up in it.

No camp is complete without a laundry line.

And finally, us, bundled up.   It was cold, so we put on every layer of clothing we had.  Our sleeping bags, on top of being old, aren't that warm.

And of course, the one night we didn't have any shelter to speak of, it froze.  The next morning, frost everywhere.  Which probably explained why we never really warmed up that night.   But we did survive, and were well set up for the next few days of hiking, which turned out to be some of the best we had in New Zealand.