Tags
New Zealand, Nikkor 135, OM-D, paradise shelduck, Port WIlliam, Rakiura, Stewart Island, variable oyster catcher
On a recent trip south, Di and I joined up with friends to walk the three day Rakiura Track on Stewart Island at the bottom of New Zealand. This is a roughly triangular route that leaves and returns from Oban, with overnight stops at Port William on the north coast and at North Arm in Paterson Inlet. Despite it being mid-summer, the weather in Bluff where we stayed the night before catching the ferry to Oban was positively polar – only 8 degrees with the wind gusting well over 60 km/hr, and passing bands of heavy showers. Our ferry ride the next day was everything that one might expect in such weather, with the tide running counter to wind and throwing up steep and unpredictable seas. But off we set, trusting our lives to stout southern boatmen, who seemed little perturbed at the prospect of what was to them probably just another day on the Strait.