Day 15

Mist from the lake where we started.

I'm in pretty good shape. I walk everywhere. I exercised three times a week all freshman year. I can play a game of volleyball with friends for like five minutes before I get bored. I hadn't really been prepared, however, for how physically demanding this trip would be. When we hiked the Routeburn Track a bit ago, I thought the hike was hard, but I thought it was going to be a one time thing. "This is what hiking is like for tourists, isn't that neat?" But today we hiked a legit mountain. We hiked up a mountain in the St. Arnaud range, I think. We started at 8 in the morning after we had a quiz on plant species. We got to the alpine zone at 11 and ate lunch before descending. And I gotta say. It was pretty challenging. We had our very athletic faculty member and our resident backpacker lead the group, and so the pace was set crazily fast for the first hour or so. Eventually, someone asked them to slow down, and they did, and only at that point did I really realize that we had been practically running and how winded I was. I was able to keep my own with the group, and the pace was much more comfortable after that, but it was definitely a hike. I guess I just wasn't expecting so much demanding activity. And we have another 3 hour hike tomorrow, in addition to kayaking. All physical activities are optional, of course, but it's not like they're impossible, and I don't want to miss out on all these amazing trips.

View from the top.

Overall, the hike was very nice with lots of pretty scenery and an amazing view at the top. The alpine vegetation was very interesting, and there were ice formations embedded in the trail.

A classmate being a lion on the side of the mountain

Just what we hiked up. No big deal.

We left St Arnaud after the hike and drove to Motueka. There, we had some time to grab dinner before our lecture at 7. I went with a few girls to a deserted Irish Pub. It was just us and the bartender. We ordered our food, which was hot and pretty prompt and not terrible. I've really grown on NZ ketchup. It's different, a bit sweeter and a lot clove-er, but it's not terrible. We got to chatting with the bartender, who talked about how tonight they had a band playing. We said that we had saw as much and were planning on coming out. He then called a man out of the back room, who played us a few songs. He was pretty good.
Our lecturer was a lady who started a kayaking business in Abel Tasman bay, sold it, and then was put in charge of managing it after the new owner ran it into the ground. She had a lot of interesting things to say about marketing and setting up business and working with bureaucracy. We would be going out with her company the following day.
We then went back out to the pub. It was full of locals until our group of twenty invaded. The band was pretty good, and then they opened it up for "open mike night" which was the band playing a song, and drunk patrons getting on stage and trying to figure out what the words were. We listened to some very painful singers, and our group sang a few songs, equally poorly, and then it was time for bed.