By Ruth
Distance: 15km
I woke up in the hut this morning feeling somewhat less than refreshed. Although staying in a hut is a real luxury with real tables and benches, counters to cook on, bunks to sleep on, all with an incredible view – it does have one drawback and that is the snoring of your fellow hut-mates. Elliot was okay because he has mastered the art of earplugs. I’ll have to get him to teach me how to put them in properly sometime before we get to the South Island where word is there are a lot of huts. A sunset view from a hut is pretty unbeatable though.
After an early breakfast and tea in the hut, today’s walk began. It was a bit like yesterday’s walk in reverse. First we battled mud while still enjoying a mountain forest hike, then we were on the road through some pretty countryside for a couple hours.
Despite them causing me some pain over the past couple of days of walking, I was very pleased to have my new shoes keeping my feet nice and dry through some muddy trail sections. I was much faster than Elliot on the downhills today because he had to carefully pick his way around the mud while I traipsed right through it!
Overall it was an enjoyable hike down from the hut. We had heard some horror stories about the mud on this section, but since the weather has been relatively dry recently, it wasn’t so bad for us.
After the forest was a pleasant gravel road where we had views back to Mount Pirongia (which we summitted yesterday), over farmland, and even down to the coast.
One thing we weren’t expecting is that since Huntly we have needed to rely a lot more on trail angels than we did further North. For the past few days we have been out of typical tourist areas where there are hostels and holiday parks, so we’ve had to rely more on the trail angel network to find places to sleep. We’ve gotten to experience lots of different styles of trail angeling and it’s been very interesting.
Jo’s Funny Farm is probably one of the earliest trail angel spots and Jo has a great guest book and lots of stories about the TA over the years. There are over a dozen of us camping out at her place tonight and she served a great dinner with homemade cheeses, butter, and ice cream from her two cows. For me the best part of staying with angels is getting to meet and chat with them. It is a much less standard experience than staying at a campsite or holiday park, and it can be hard not knowing exactly what to expect when you arrive after a long day of walking. But it’s much more personal and interesting too, and a really cool part of the trail.