Alles is een illusie

It’s been over two and a half months now since I finished my walk trough the south island of New Zealand, and I start realizing more and more how amazing it was. I still think about it every day, and sometimes I look at the pictures I took and I just want to go back.

At the same time, I slowly start to understand what made my journey. Of course the amazing landscapes, the lonliness, but a big part of it were all the huts I passed on my trip. I didn’t sleep in all of them, sometimes I passed two huts to spend the night in the third, other days I walked from the first one to the second. Some huts were not longer maintained, but were still good enough as a shelter to cook and to put my tent next to. In the huts are ‘hutbooks’. People writing their entries in them with their plans, comments about their day etc. It’s a beautiful thing to see the same names sometimes, and to read about their journey. 

Poeple wrote poems om walls of huts, left books, carved their entry in the wooden walls. Some huts were more than 50 years old and others were not older than a year. 

O, how I miss these places… 

(Source: flickr.com)

The day I crossed Travers Saddle, in Nelson Lakes National Park, was one of the best days. The light was so wonderfull, and changed so many times because of the clouds. Life really felt dramatic, floundering trough deep snow at 1600 meters, the mountains in front of me and even fresh snow falling. 

I don’t know, but know I’m finished with all this, thinking about the past 3 months, I always see a few moments without thinking, and this is one of them. In 4 days, from St. Arnaud until I crossed the Waiau Pass, I felt truly home in the mountains. That moment I simply belonged nowhere else but there, and that’s without a doubt one of the best feelings men can experience, and a true gift in life, as some people never feel that way. (I’ll upload some more from these days later) 

Views to the Ohau Range, next to Lake Ohau. A lot of water in the lake and the river due the extreme rainfall the two days before. Later that day I pitched my tent up under the mountains, which I crossed the next day. 

So, after almost 3 months it’s time to make a selection out of 1800 pictures. Let’s start with these.