Routeburn Great Walk – from McKenzie Hut to The Divide

Routeburn Great Walk – Day 3, from McKenzie Hut until The Divide. 15km, 4h30min.

The sun is here this morning, but there is still this mist clinging to the mountains for the first part of the hike. It still makes for beautiful scenery. When you see the magic of this morning, it makes me feel like we really missed a huge part of this trail with the rain yesterday. I guess, we will have to walk it again someday.

The rocks that were a stunning jade colors are today a very plain grey. I will console myself with that fact.

We had kea flying around for some times in the trees, so we got to see them on this hike too ! A few Weka hide in the bush, running away from the path ahead. It was a nice morning, the air was crisp and fresh. The path was easy.

There were many waterfalls still heaving from yesterday’s rain, and I really enjoyed this part of the walk.

We didn’t feel like going to Key Summit, it would have added 1h30 to our day and we had a 3h drive back to Queenstown to do.

At about lunch, we were at the carpark and on our way to Te Anau to refuel, give back the locket for the car relocation service and have a good lunch. We had spotted last year a nice bakery doing pies, and we stopped there. The pies were nice, and we were starving. 

On we continued to Queenstown, the road along the lake from Kingston is still just a gorgeous as I remember. We had a few trolls on the road driving so slow and refusing to step aside to let the others go… until now, every slow vehicule we have come across had been exceptionally civil.

Many of our clothes ( and sleeping bag ) were still kind of dry, but also kind of damp. So we did a massive laundry and put some other stuff in the dryer too. 
Finally, after a long day, we arrived at our 5-star accommodations – St Moritz. I still had points to use and for the last two nights, I wanted to have a very good bed. It’s so good to be in a proper hotel. I think we are just getting a little old now. I wonder how we will fare with the hostels in Latin America.

The restaurant at the hotel is delicious – we enjoy a good diner and go to bed early.