Start­ing from the south­ern tip of the South Island I made my way to the north­ern end through the South­ern Alps. The scenery was stun­ning and the topog­ra­phy was steep and amaz­ing. New Zealand is plan­ning a long dis­tance hik­ing trail some­where along this route, but noth­ing has been built yet. So much of this 805–950 mile route was cross-coun­try and try­ing to con­nect pre-exist­ing trails, many of which were in dis­re­pair and ter­ri­ble shape. The trail qual­i­ties are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent form what we are used to in the U.S. They gen­er­al­ly only build trail through the bush and any­where it is open you are left on your own to go cross-coun­try with map and com­pass. This trip was very dif­fi­cult. In places a speed of .5 miles per hour was the most that was pos­si­ble because of the tech­ni­cal ter­rain. How­ev­er, the scenery around the next cor­ner always made up for every­thing. It was awe­some and quite an adventure.

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