By Elliot

We had the most leisurely day. After a late breakfast, we spent time sitting outdoors in the shade, booking our ferry tickets to the South Island and looking ahead to the next few weeks and what food we might need to buy ahead of time. In some parts of the South Island, the distance between towns with supermarkets is too great, so you prepare a package with food ahead of time and send it to a place on trail where they hold it for you until you arrive. We wanted to know what places those were, because the thing to do is send those packages while still on the North island.

After our planning session, we went out for coffee and lunch, and to pick up some wine and groceries. We’d offered to cook a vegetarian dish, and while Rob and George’s garden had some of what we needed, the eggplants and tomatoes weren’t quite ripe yet.

The afternoon we cooked our dish and sat around socializing.

There’s another TA walker staying here tonight, whom we last saw at the Kaitieke war monument and before that in Waitomo. It’s funny how sometimes you can keep running into the same people even though you aren’t quite on the same schedule.

Dinner tonight was a feast, with Rob’s sister and her family being in town from Darwin, Australia.

As dinner was winding down, and there might have been some wine drunk by all, the topic of trail beards came up. Some people grow out their beards while walking the trail, me included. But a few days ago I’d decided I was going to get it trimmed because it was inconvenient. I was getting cereal and couscous stuck in my moustache hairs, and my towel, which I always hope can dry before I pack it away, had to absorb a ton of water from my beard after I would shower.

I mentioned that I was planning on having it trimmed, and Rob graciously offered to do it for me. So out came the clippers.

And I also needed a haircut. So most of my head hair is also gone.

I feel like a new man, refreshed, reinvented, and ready to tackle the rest of the trail!