Back to civilisation (and beer)

Had a very relaxing morning in the hut, chatting to Donald the DOC warden. He lives in a little house next to the hut, and is quite frankly, starved for conversation, so was quite happy to chat for an hour or so.

One of the topics of conversation, was how the monitor the number of people passing through the park. They have 3 ways, a sensor on the bridge (under the wobbly board), counters on the toilet doors, and measuring the effluent cartridge in the modern container toilet or "weighing the poos" (Donald's words).

Donald also told us to look at a 15 min documentary about the building of the Mount Aspiring huts. Sounded very interesting. See the 1st pic for how to find it.

After saying goodbye to Donald, we had gentle, flat (yes honestly, I think that this was the first flat walk since arriving in NZ) walk back to the car park to catch our shuttle back to Wanaka.

We were feeling quite chuffed with our 3 days in the wilds, when we stopped to pick up three aussie blokes who'd been out for 10! Turns out it was a good thing that we picked them up when the driver drove the (rather clapped out) minibus rather too harshly over the fords and rocks, and punctured the tyre.

The aussies leapt into action, disdainful of the kiwi driver's suggestion that we all lift the minibus up (facilitating the tyre change), and located the jack. On closer inspection, the aussies pointed out that he had also trashed the left rear shock. It was in their words "just sort of dangling".

They got the tyre changed, and asked what driver wanted to do about the shock. His words (I kid you not) were 'let's just go and get some beer!'

So off we drove. And if you think that he took it easy on the rough terrain to save the injured vehicle, you're wrong... There was beer at the end of this journey.

Surprisingly, we made it back without any further issues, and have all coincidentally arrived in the same pub in Wanaka.

After 3 days of dehydrated food, today we're having steak!