To Oban on Rakiura (Stewart Island)

Most tour companies ignore this island. Well it does only have one village, a lot of forest, a lot of mud and is at the end of the world so this is somewhat understandable.
Still there is a regular ferry service between Bluff and Oban that brings people to and from the island twice a day. So there has to be some traffic.
And the ferry is not just a small boat. It’s big enough to have some indoor seating and a transfer service to Invercargill and Te Anau.

For some reason Ben and I were told that pickup would be at 7:30 and I was not ready at 7:15 when the driver arrived. I had helped someone from our other group to be in time for his pickup. Ben was downstairs and got the brunt of the anger. When I was told that we had the wrong time and got on the bus apoplogising the driver seemed to be very understanding. (Got 5 minutes to cool down and another one to vent on. – Sorry Ben.)

Apart from that little bit of excitement all was well and we got to the ferry in Bluff with lots of time to spare. So I took some pictures of the ferry as well.

On the island our next step was to find a place to sleep. Instead of booking ahead I had nothing this time. Because it was the next one from the pier we went to the BBH first.
And it came as it had to come: Bunk beds were all booked out.
But: They could offer us a private twin bed room. For 70 NZD a night. Which made $35 per person and was in the regular price range again.

So after sleeping arrangements where secured I decided to go and do a walk. There are multiple walks on Stewart Island from 1 hour to 11 days.
The great walk there is the Rakiura walk and takes 3 days.
As I wanted to see how such a walk looked like I found myself a route that goes to and partly along the southern part of this walk and was still a loop back to town.

One of the places this walk went past by was an old site where they transferred the wood from the trams to water based transport. Somewhow there is still a lot of the smaller wood remaining and it looks like a moor at that place now.

Apart from a lot of mud the walk was nice and when I got back in time for sunset I was sure that I saw things that where not there. Kakadoos. Or better Kakas. For me those birds belong to Australia or South America. But still here they where.