Queen Charlotte Track

We caught an overnight bus from Auckland to Wellington then caught the 8:30am interisland ferry, Kaitaki, from Wellington across the Cook Straight and through Queen Charlotte Sound to Picton on New Zealand's South Island, arriving just before midday.  All went very smoothly, until we tried to disembark from the ferry, we were delayed leaving about half an hour due to a faulty platform bridge.  We walked the short distance from the ferry terminal to Picton Quayside to check in for the 1:30pm Cougar Line watertaxi back out through Queen Charlotte Sound again to Ship Cove, the starting point for the Queen Charlotte Track. 

We arrived at Ship Cove just after 2:30.  A beautiful little bay, with wooden carvings and boat shaped picnic tables.  We were the only ones dropped off at Ship Cove, we felt like we'd been marooned on an island, there was no one else around.  We had a look at the Captain Cook monument erected in 1913 to commemorate his visits to the bay, then started hiking or 'tramping' in NZ.
We opted to just hike a short distance our first afternoon on the track as we were tired from the overnight travelling.  We hiked 4.5km to the first camp site, Schoolhouse Bay Campsite, which was a nice warm up hike, a steepish up with great views at the top and then down again. We passed lots of animal traps on the way. The DOC are trying a new experimental method to rid the peninsula of rats and possums.  We were the only ones camping at the campsite and we only passed one other family of four out for an afternoon stroll. Peaceful bliss, just lots of lovely birdsong and gentle rippling sea water.  There are plenty of basic campsites along the track, most of them are DOC (Department of Conservation) owned and are cheap at NZ$6 per person and have water supplies, toilet facilities of varying standards and some of the larger sites have cooking/washing up areas.  The toilet at our campsite was a 'loo with a view', with no one else around we could leave the door open!  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon with a cool breeze.  It felt so nice to be back doing what we like best - hiking - and doing our own independent travel again.  We also felt like we were 'home' back in our little tent!

The Queen Charlotte Track is a 71km long tramping/mountain biking track from Ship Cove to Anakiwa running parallel to Queen Charlotte Sound. The track crosses both private and public land and is renowned for its stunning views and contrasting landscapes. It passes through lush coastal forest, around historic bays, along ridges and has a large variety of native plants and wildlife.  It is classed an easy tramping track and is the Marlborough Sounds section of the Te Araroa Track, the 3000km track stretching the whole length of New Zealand from Cape Reinga to Bluff which we were originally planning on thru hiking but have put on hold until next year.  We decided to get a small taster of NZ tramping whilst here, albeit briefly, in preparation for next year plus the chance to research what suitable food is available for thru hikers at grocery stores, quite a different choice than in the US.

Our second day we were hiking for 8:15am, it was another warm day with sunny spells, a nice temperature for hiking.  We hiked 22km to our next campsite, Camp Bay Campsite.  An easy walking day up and over a small hill with great views at the top over Endeavour Inlet which we passed by later, then a fairly level track to Camp Bay where we arrived at 1:30pm.  It was quiet when we got there but as we expected, it being a Friday evening, the campsite soon filled up.  The weather turned as forecast and rained on and off from late afternoon and through the night.  It was warm in the day but got quite cold during the night down to around 4/5°C.  By morning though we had clear blue skys again. We're back to going to bed early, 9pm when it goes dark and waking up early.  It gets light about 5:30am and from about 5am we were awoken by a beautiful but a very loud bird dawn chorus.

Our third day on the track we hiked 24.5 km from Camp Bay to Torea Saddle.  We were away for 7:40am and reached our campsite, Cowshed Bay Campsite by 1:30 pm again.  The track today was still easy tramping but had lots of ups and downs following a ridge line, sometimes in trees, sometimes open over Black Rock with great views down into a different valley/sound, Kenepuru Sound.  Later on we had views back to Picton and the interislander ferries in Queen Charlotte Sound.  It was a warmish sunny day again but with quite a cool breeze, perfect for hiking.  We had another relaxing afternoon snoozing at camp whilst guarding our tent from 'Weka' birds.  Cheeky things the weka's, they'll try and pinch anything, our cookset was stood on top of a large zip lock bag, one persistent bird tried dragging it all away plus also attempted to steal our rubbish bag a few times!  Whenever we stop along the track they always appear from nowhere.

Our last day we hiked 20km from Cowshed Bay leaving at 7:40 am again arriving in Anakiwa, the end of the track, at 1pm.  Another lovely day hiking with lots of great views.  At Anakiwa we waited in the sunshine for our prebooked water taxi back to Picton at 4pm enjoying an I e cream from the little green caravan cafe.  Back in Picton we found a bar/restaurant serving a Sunday roast dinner, delicious, before catching the 6:15pm bus to Nelson.  We should have arrived in Nelson at 8:30pm but actually arrived at 10pm, our bus had a blown an tyre - hopefully that's the last of our public transport delays!  We'd arranged to stay with some good old friends of mine from the UK, Lisa and Warwick, who live about forty minutes away from Nelson near Motueka. Warwick was waiting to pick us up, luckily our bus driver managed to get a message to him for us that we'd be delayed.  It was so nice to see them both again after seven years, we were up quite late chatting and catching up.  We had to wait until the morning to meet their two daughters, they were fast asleep in bed.