Routeburn Day 4 and Te Anau

Stupid day four of Routeburn. What a waste of a day. The one nice thing was that it snowed during the night so the surrounding mountains were snow capped.  We hung out in the hut until 1pm (it was cold and the hut had a wood stove).  We said goodbye to the Australians and the Canadians (although we knew we would see the Canadians on the bus one last time).  We met a woman from the UK who advised us to see the lakes region of Northern England.  We talked with a guy from the Netherlands for a while.  He was a lawyer back home and one day he was offered partner and decided that he didn't want to be a lawyer for the next 40 years so he declined the offer and left to travel.  He's been writing a novel about investing while traveling the world.

When we finally left the hut we walked back up Key Summit (which is a side trail) to take pictures of the snow capped mountains and to kill a little more time.  We met Amut from Israel who was just released from his required 3 years in the army and is spending 2 months in New Zealand. He graciously took pictures of us, and us of him. Here's a picture of Amut we took when he was further up the trail.

When the bus finally came at 4:30, we were tired and cold and just wanted a warm bed.  The bus dropped us off in downtown Te Anau, which isn't more than two streets lining a lake.  We walked half an hour to Bob and Maxine's Backpackers where we had reserved two beds.  They also had bikes that the guests could take into town, so we took two of them to the grocery store and bought dinner and breakfast and snacks.  Back at the hostel, Suzanne from the UK who we had met at MacKenzie hut on the Routeburn track had also taken a bed in our room.  It was fun to talk with her about the rest of Routeburn.  We made tortellini with alfredo sauce (from the refrigerated section) and split a bottle of wine with Suzanne.  Another guest started playing acoustic guitar and with a warm fire it was a great end to a four day hike.

The next day we spent in rainy Te Anau waiting for the 5:30pm bus up to Queenstown.  We ate fish and chips and wedges for lunch, had ice cream, watched the film Shadowland at the local cinema and hung out at the library with free internet.  In Queenstown we stayed at the Southern Laughter (after checking The Flaming Kiwi was full) where we had free potato and herb soup.  The plan was to rent a car the next day and drive up the West Coast.