Kepler day 3 - The Great Woodland Amble

The little bunk room worked a treat with a much better night's sleep for us.

We awoke to rain though, Fiordland rain! We've pointed out previously that we've had very good luck with the weather, but it looked to have run out. So we set off in full waterproofs, relieved that we hadn't carried them over the Kepler mountains for nothing.

Fortunately, the rain soon eased off, and we were walking through a steaming jungle, full of ferns, not-beech trees and lancewoods (more on these later).

One thing to get out of the way before going any further is that Hannah won the Tree Fern game (the rules of which will be left as an exercise to the reader).

The walk continued through the jungle, and the humidity sky-rocketed,and it got hotter and hotter. After a while we started hallucinating strange purple mushrooms. We've included a photo for you so you can see what they looked like.

We made it to the hut by late-lunchtime, and after a refreshing cup of tea, hung out on the beach of Lake Manapouri in the blazing sunshine, taking a dip in the water, which was refreshing for several seconds, before being best described as rather nippy. We're now hiding from the sandflys in the bunk room waiting for our (only) clothes to dry (lack or forethought there).

So, the lancewoods. These are a funky tree that changes its shape completely after a few years. It starts out being long and whippy with spiney downward pointing leaves, and then after the trees mature, start growing bushy leaves in a pompom on top, and the spiney leaves drop off.

We first heard about them on the journey back from Doubtful Sound. A colleague of our guide was getting a lift back, and she was like 'Hey Keith, Did you tell these guys about the funky lancewood in Manapouri", and he says "no", and she's like "Whaaaaaaat?" (imagine a high pitched kiwi accent that's a bit over-enthusiastic here) "How could you not tell them about this tree? This tree is AWESOME!, like usually these trees are like This Big" (makes a circle with thumb and forefinger) "but this one is like big enough to like hug, and it must be way old... " and so on.

Anyway, we saw loads of them today, including a few that had juvenile leaves at the bottom, and a pompom forming on the top. Apparently the first botanists to catalogue them thought that they were different species. They were designed to evade the Moa, so we're not sure when they're going to notice it's extinct and not trying to eat them anymore...