On Friday, at twelve o’clock, we started our trip and drove to Wanaka. There we got the tickets for Mt. Aspirin Hut, bought some food and had lunch in our favourite café.
The way to the car park, however, was longer than expected and in a difficult condition. In the last kilometres of the gravel route we had to pass several fords, but this was not really a problem with Carina’s a 4 WD Subaru car.
As soon as we started to walk it began to rain. I was glad that I changed my Jeans to Shorts, which could dry beside a fire. Because of the rain we didn’t get on fast and it got dark. In the distance we could see a light from a hut and we walked towards it. Completely wet we knocked at the door and asked if we could stay here, because the hut was quite small, just two rooms with a fireplace and four beds each. After few minutes we’ve had a good fire, put off our wet clothes and dry one on and warmed us up at the fire. We cooked soup and pasta and ate them with Ciabatta bread. Because of the lack of light we wet to bed early and talked until we slept.
We were woken up by a strange noise in the morning. I supposed that it could be a bird and stood up. When I walked outside I could see an almost clear sky, the beautiful mountains, which are covered on the top with snow and a big Kea on the roof. They aren’t shy and try to eat everything they could find!
We ate what we could find in our bags, which were toast bread, salami and Nutella. We went on to the Mt. Aspirin Hut, which we reached after 35min. There we saw that our original way to the Cascade Saddle was snowed in and not passable without crampons. So we decided to go to another hut three hours away. The track was pretty good and led us through the bush. Unfortunately it rained and we got wet again. After one and a half hour we had to decide if we should get on to the hut, which is might not suitable to stay in autumn, or to go back and stay in Mt. Aspirin hut. Of course we decided to go back and tried to dry our clothes (again). The wood wasn’t really good and it took us a long time until we had a good fire. However, we spent the whole afternoon sitting by the fire and eating paste, and bread.
We were preparing our dinner, when we saw a light coming closer to the hut. To our all surprise, there was a family coming with bikes. They were all wet and it was quite cold outside too. We offered them the place in front of the oven and went on cooking our dinner. The family turned out to be a father with his three children and his former Aupair with her boyfriend. The last ones are from Germany, while the family used to live in bay of island and moved this year to Wanaka.
After all had eaten enough and the youngest one’s fell asleep we played a card game called “Oh hell!”:
First you get one card and after you’ve looked at it you bet if you win this turn. If you’re right, you get five points, if not, you loose ten points. You win a turn, when you have the highest card, including trumps. Every round the number of cards is increasing until you have seven cards, then it gets back until you have one card again. So with every round the number of turns increase as well and the chances to win more points.
After all, we got to back late and slept in until half past eight. The weather was good this morning and we had a good trip back to the car, despite the fact that the ground was wet and sooner or later our shoes too. We drove back to Queenstown and ate a Fergburger in Kiwi style: in shorts and bar feet. While we were eating a good amount of beef and drinking a beer, it started to rain! After a whole sunny weekend in Queenstown, it started to rain when we came back. But this couldn’t stop us to eat a cookie at Cookie Time, before Carina drove me and Victor home.
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