Hike: 18.5km

We slept quite well in Freshwater Hut and as usual were the last to leave. We weren't going too far so weren't feeling under pressure to get going and felt it was more important to get nice and warm before setting off.

Stewart Island is all about the tramping and the kiwis.

Many of the people we met were doing, or had done, the North-West Circuit. This is an 8-12 day tramp completely in the wilderness. The people we met who had nearly finished this seemed to be ready to finish and did smell quite bad! Not for us. We had read about this in London and thought it would be an amazing thing to do but as we got closer and close to Stewart Island the less appealing it became. Stewart Island is reknowned for its muddy tracks, apparently some is waist deep in places!

The kiwis run around in the twilight hours and even in broad daylight which makes them much easier to spot, so many people (us included) come here to try and see them. They even run around on Mason Bay which was why we were heading that way.

Our hike took us almost across the island and was muddy and boggy for much of the day. Claire did an amazing job of navigating around the mud except when absolutely impossible. I gave up and had lots of fun trudging through it all! Some of the track was boardwalked but not much. We saw lots of birds, mainly bellbirds, robins, fantails and fernbirds. We passed a group of people going the other way who'd seen two kiwis on the track! We began to get quite excited about the prospect of seeing one!

By the end of the day my knee was really playing up. After feeling fantastic for the whole Kepler Track it was getting beaten by this level walk! I think the problem was due to the uncertain footing in the mud causing some twisting motion. Walking around on the sand dunes really finished it off, so I was feeling a bit nervous about the walk back the next day...

Luckily there was just enough room in the hut for us to get bunks next to each other. There were a couple of families who had either walked to Mason Bay or got an exciting sounding helicopter trip across! Our kiwi friends, Anita and Justin, arrived having just spotted a kiwi up the track so we packed up our dinner things and went for an explore back up the track. Unfortunately we didn't see one so went down to the beach for a romantic dinner.

We set up a roll mat and sat cooking our dinner on the sand dunes at the most Southerly point either of us had ever been too, and the most Southerly point of this trip. We were treated to a magnificent sunset and really felt like we were at the end of the Earth. We speculated as to whether or not the next stop West would be back round to Stewart Island again! No, we later found out, Patagonia and Chile are in the way, but that's about it!

After dinner and no kiwis on the beach (boo!) we quietly crept back up to the hut looking for kiwis. We heard a few rustles and scared a possum who fell out of his tree and ran off down the path! Back in the hut we got chatting to some of our hut companions. They'd all seen lots of kiwis so it seemed that our luck was against us. One couple claimed to have cycled 150km from Venice to Verona on their first day on bikes in Italy, having a bottle of wine and a sleep in the park on the way and then climbed a mountain to get to a campsite. Claire and I were quietly thinking "that's a load of crap" but were too polite to challenge them!

More successful kiwi spotters arrived prompting us to go on the hunt again. We walked around for another 40 minutes, again to no avail! Boo!

Eventually we tucked ourselves up in bed and slept fairly well. Apparently there had been a kiwi in the night next to the hut and three wandering around at 6am! We just seemed to be jinxed with the little birds!