Routeburn Track, New Zealand

The Routeburn Track is one of New Zealand's Great Walks, a series of popular multi-day hikes which require hut or campsite reservations booked well in advance. Several months ago, I booked my December dates to do the 3 day Routeburn hike but ultimately had to cancel when I realized I would have had to race down the coast to start the hike in time. I was disappointed but didn't want to rush my trip. Fast forward a couple of weeks and while listing all of the places my travel buddies and I still wanted to see in our limited time, Guillaume and I put together an ambitious 3 day itinerary that involved hiking Routeburn–in one day.

We caught a bus early one morning for the 2 hour drive to reach the start of the 33 kilometer hike and hit the ground running. After several days of drizzle and clouds, we lucked out with the sunny weather.

The views of mountains, valleys, and clear turquoise waters were incredible.

We had a quick snack break a couple of hours in.

Routeburn has just one significant climb rising about 500 meters in just a few kilometers, but the spectacular scenery was a welcomed distraction.

If ever I've been curious in my life, it was now so I hustled to keep up with Guillaume (who regularly competes in ultra marathons) and find out why on earth I could hear Scotish bagpipes in the middle of a kiwi hike. A Scotish flag greeted us and we learned that the hut warden was putting on Scotish highland games that day. We arrived too late to see the events which I'm told included log throwing and stone tosses, but managed to catch the tail end of the bagpipes concert.

With just a dozen kilometers remaining, we were soon off again and arrived at the 174 meter Earland Falls before long.

After 7 hours 15 minutes, we reached the end of the gorgeous 33km hike.

The hike concluded, we had just one final task for the day: hitchhike to our accommodation for the night. This is one of the safest and friendliest countries in the world to hitch and it wasn't long before we were picked up to travel the final 14 kilometers where hot showers awaited us.