Tramping on Kepler

Just so you know, "tramping" means hiking in New Zealandish.. it's like that and that's the way it is.
And Kepler is the name of the area.. and of the track..
A beautiful 4 days walk, 5 to 6 hours of up and down walking per day.. tiring!

The first day goes straight up to mount Luxmore.. it's a tiring day..
The second day keeps going up for a while and then follows the ridge and drops down in the valley.. it's a tiring day..
The third day is a nice almost flat walk accross the rainforest.. yet it does go up a few times and after 2 days of walking, well.. it's a tiring day..
The fourth day is the day you walk alone back to Te Anau because your friends (who've been showing off, going like crazy all the way up) are too tired and take the bus back!
It's also the day you finally go back to "The Moose" for a proper meal after 4 days of starving on insufficient portions of dried noodles! Viva le moose!

And we got way lucky on the weather so really nothing to complain about.. (if it wasn't for these aching legs!)

Sara and Reg looking sexy at the beginning of the walk!

beautiful light coming through the beech trees..

our first picnic by the beach before ascending to mount Luxmore.. after that my batteries were dead for the rest of the walk so that's all you'll get! (gotta love digital!)

.. i can't believe i almost forgot to mention the biggest subject for discussion during the walk!

The week end before we walked was the "Kepler challenge", which, as the name suggests, consists of running the Kepler track as fast as possible..

Well apparently "as fast as possible" was the older version of the challenge; it turned to "faster than possible" when some kind of sensless psychopath ran the whole thing in 4 and a half hours!! (yes, we're talking the same track i climbed painfully in 4 days!!.. shit, some people are just not from this world!)