Wet. Stinky. Sand flies. Those are today’s themes. I woke up this morning and it had been raining most of the night. It was still raining when I got out of bed, but stopped as I was packing up. There were still people sleeping in the kitchen (and I just remembered now I meant to get more pictures of the hut and didn’t, I’m sorry 😐) so I had a cold breakfast and headed out onto the trail.

And then turned around almost immediately. I’d forgotten about the fallen trees, and man they weren’t kidding. So I started my way around the tree line. Since this was so recent there wasn’t much of a track. And since it had been raining, and it was all grass, it was wet. And often squishy. My poor poor shoes. After a while I came across a marker that led me back into the forest but it was still bad.

Seriously like the whole forest was already standing dead trees and the cyclone came through and just toppled it all over. I wonder if they’ll just reroute the trail, so many fallen trees would take a super long time to cut a trail through.

Ok, coming back to this post hours later and much happier and I’ll change the tone a bit!

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I made it to a crazy swing bridge, crossed it, and braved it a second time to get some pictures. Enjoy.

Shortly after that I arrived at the carpark which would be the end of my walking for the day. I quick changed from my horrifying clothes into my slightly less horrifying clothes, walked out to the road and stuck out my thumb.

After a bit a kiwi couple from the north island in a big RV picked me up and took me to the turnoff for Hanmer Springs. Funny enough, as they pulled up to drop me off, another hitchhiker was there trying to hitch, so she got a bit of a surprise as I got out and she got in. It’s like they were driving a bus!

A bit later got my second hitch the rest of the way into town. First impressions: I like this place. Beautiful setting, lots of amenities, and not loads of people. It’s kinda chill and relaxed here. The Main Street through town has a big park separating the 2 sides and is totally lined with RVs and campervans. Craziness.

Got into the hostel and took a shower and did some MUCH needed laundry. Oh, and this hostel puts hikers in room number 3, since our packs generally smell so bad. I’d heard about this on the way up from some folks and was happy to find out it was true. I now want to open a hostel somewhere on a thru hiking route called room number 3.

Met up with Greg again. He’s apparently been about half a day ahead of me this whole section. We went out and got really really good steaks at a local place. There’s supposed to be amazing pizza here too and the burger shack is supposed to be pretty great.

Anywho, Greg sent me this picture he took of me crossing the Otira river a few days ago.

Sketchy.

This place is beautiful. I hope the weather clears up a bit tomorrow so I can get some good scenery in. Though even in cloud and rainy it’s still pretty great.

Tomorrow is a zero day. Not because I need the rest, but because I need to resupply and I need to ship off a box full of food to St. Arnaud to get me through the Richmond ranges. Since that is 10 days of food it’ll take me a bit to get everything sorted. I’ll also be hitting up the hot springs and meandering around town a bit. Should be fun!