Routeburn Tramps

Our vow to stay on the outside of Queenstown still intact after a night’s rest, it’s back into the trusty Yaris and toward the mountains. Today is a day of ‘tramping’ (Kiwi for ‘hiking’), but we stop first in Glenorchy to check out the local scene. And…there’s nothing much to see, so after a snack we hit the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks”.

The Great Walks are a handful of world-class hikes spread throughout NZ. Routeburn is near Queenstown, in the Fiordland region; our time only grants us a day-long in-and-out, but the whole track is 3-4 days long. The well-built track leads us across swaying cable bridges and into a beech forest, alongside a gorge filled with the bluest water we’ve ever seen.

Frequent stops to cool our feet in glacial melt streams keep us energized. We make it as far as Routeburn Flats hut, where other hikers are resting up for the next leg or staying the night. A bit past there, after a steep uphill, we decide we’ve reached halfway and head back down the mountain to the sheep pastures below.

Back in Queenstown (vow notwithstanding, we still gotta eat!), we stumble across The Cow restaurant in an old cow shed, hidden in a back alley. After a long hike, what we need most is nourishment, and their spaghetti Bolognese is exactly what we’re looking for.