Cara's World: The Routeburn Track

Last weekend I hiked the Routeburn Track on a date. The Routeburn Track is one of the Great Walks in New Zealand. There are eight of them and the Kepler Track I did with my dad is one as well. The most popular is probably the Milford Track.

The Routeburn is only 32 km and it took us two days. Some people run it in 4 hours and some people take four days.

Map of the Routeburn

It was easier than the Kepler but the scenery was just as amazing. I took the weekend off work and we left early Friday morning. Joe, my date for the hike came down from Christchurch the night before. I'd met Joe in Sydney in December, we chatted for a bit and realized we were both moving to New Zealand soon. We agreed to meet up in the way you do when you first meet someone and you are like yeah we should totally meet up in a distance future in an different country...

Surprising we actually did meet up (four months later) because after I'd done the Kepler I was keen to do more hikes and Joe said he was up for a hike. Everything worked out really well and we had amazing weather. Joe's flatmate hiked the track in the opposite direction so we were able to swap cars at the end and meet back in Queenstown to exchange them at the end of the hike.

Since Joe lives in Christchurch it ended up being the longest first date in history. He got to Queenstown on Thursday night and didn't leave till Sunday evening. I'm joking though it went well and didn't feel like the longest date in history. And I'm sure it's not actually the longest first date in history.

Here are some pictures from the hike.