Rescuing a Dog at Lake Rotoiti

Wednesday 21 January

“Weather warnings” up north and “weather watches” down south - Aotearoa really is the Land of the Long White Cloud (or rather grey cloud). We revisited our itinerary again and decided that we should stick to our original plans to head west, but just hang out in Westport for now rather than the lovely Gentle Annie’s a bit further north. After Russ had completed his office chores, Louis & Nickie had swum, Nickie & I had purchased an op shop treat each and we’d been to Pak’n’save, we squelched about a bit packing up and set off for the Nelson Lakes & St Arnaud under cloudy skies.

Glimpsed the Leopards Go Wild orange van as we passed the NZIRBE POP on the way into “town” and parked up at Beechnest POP in St Arnaud - right next to Cleta & Alan’s Snowy (we met at Castle Claremont) - though we never quite touched base this time. Had a late lunch in the afternoon sun and walked down to Lake Rotoiti, checked out the eels under the jetty then walked round the peninsula, being serenaded by Tui, bell birds and piwakawaka ❤️. The gulls here at the Lake are the slightly rarer black billed variety - tārapuka - endemic to NZ unlike their red-billed cousins, and much less squawky it seemed.

Just as we had walked about 2km and reached the spot where the track forked back up to the Visitor Centre we came across a wobbly old dog staggering along all alone. We spoke to some other walkers who had not seen anyone along their path, and we had only passed one other walker on our track so we were a little concerned for him.

Nobody was around, he took himself to the lake for a drink but he seemed lost, so after a bit I unclipped the chain around his collar and we walked him back up to the DOC office, popped a post on the local FB group & eventually found his home. Poor old fella - he reminded me of Sprockett from Fraggle Rock! Dogs are strictly forbidden on DOC land, especially wandering around off lead so I bet the owners got an earful!

Walked home via the second jetty, had some fun with the timer setting on the GoPro, took some photos for a couple of other visitors (sharing the 16:9 aspect ratio advice as always) and then BBQed lamb burgers with haloumi for dinner… nom nom!

Threatened rain showed up just as we were clearing up and hasn’t stopped since 🙄🌧️