Queen Charlotte Track - Marlborough Sounds

Hi everyone,

We just hiked for a couple of days (and camped out one night) on the Queen Charlotte Track which overlooks the Marlborough Sounds. Most of the postcards you seen of New Zealand have pictures of the area around the Queen Charlotte Track, so you can imagine that it is an amazing area and the views are incredible. For those of you requiring some aid to your imagination, pics are attached :)



The track skirts the ridgeline in most places and tops the hills in others - most of the time, we were around a quarter of a mile up from the sea so that is why the views are so high above the water. Our camp was just below the ridge on a mountain overlooking the sounds and two harbors (you can make out the town lights in at least one of the pics). The views were awesome and the weather very nice - until around 9pm when it decided to start raining. The rain had hints of a hurricane and touches of a tornado at times throughout the night - it didn't stop raining and blowing until around 10am the next morning - so very glad the tent doesn't leak!



There was one other hiker sharing our campspot - a young hydrological engineer from Berlin. This guy took off work for a month to hike around and all over New Zealand! Evidently, foks from Europe do that sort of thing all the time - they chill pretty hard over there.



Anyway, despite the nasty weather that night, all the rain actually made the track look pretty incredible. Alot of the trees and flowers look very tropical and all the rain dripping off of everything just seemed to be appropriate.



Stay tuned - we're headed to the world-famous Abel Tasman national park in a couple of days. The Abel Tasman is supposed to have some of the most beautiful secluded bays and beaches in the world, so we are very excited!!

Talk to you all soon!