Taking a Chance & Going For It - 14 Days in New Zealand

I bought a plane ticket to New Zealand. Two weeks to hike as much as I could, do touristy things across the country, see a bunch of rare birds, and most important of all... see my friend Sprocket who I met on the Pacific Crest Trail last year.
So I went for it, a last minute decision to live life and do something impulsive. To experience new things and to get out of my comfort zone. To spend time with Sprocket and to make more plans with her for the year to come.
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Sprocket and I met while we both were thru hiking the PCT, right around Kennedy Meadows and the beginning of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From there we hiked together for a few days, we summited Mount Whitney the highest point in the US together, and overall had a great time. We both parted ways but stayed in touch. By the end of the hike, we had already made plans to see each other again. Going off on a two week road trip up the Oregon Coast, and hiking another 200 miles together through Washington. But Sprocket went off alone afterwards to New Zealand, to hike another super long trail, the 3,000km Te Araroa Trail!
We both plan to hike the Great Divide Trail together in the Canadian Rockies come July, but that is many months away! So I got a plane ticket to come see her in NZ.
We hiked the challenging 5 passes loop together which is just west of Queenstown and Glenorchy. Starting from the same trailhead as one of the great walks the Routeburn Track, we headed north into what I think is Mount Aspiring National Park. A mostly trail-less route through tussock, fording rivers, tramping through dense bush, and high above treeline in the New Zealand alpine. The weather got quite bad as we were ascending our final pass, and overall was a good lesson on gear we would later be using on the GDT in Canada.
We continued on to do tourist activities in Queenstown and Wanaka, before heading down to Invercargill, Bluff (the southern terminus of the Te Araroa Trail!), and Stewart Island to do some bird watching and searching for a kiwi. A native and endangered species of flightless bird only found in a few places across the country.
On Stewart Island we hiked a small bit of another great walk called the Rakiura Track. Hiking and camping on beaches and in dense tropical forests it was a very special experience. Around 4am no more than 2 meters away from our tent we were woken up by what sounded like a car alarm, it was a kiwi! Right there next to our Zpacks Duplex tent. We were the only ones at the campsite who got to see it, as it scurried off before others woke up and walked over.
In the end this trip was great, it was a reminder to do things now, that there is no better time than now.
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