By Ruth
Distance: 22 km
Today was our last day on the Queen Charlotte Track and we savoured every minute. Knowing that we had a fairly short day of walking, we spent an extra hour in the morning at camp, drinking our tea and enjoying the view of the bay and the couple of early water-skiers out on the water, as well as a surprise small cruise ship that had appeared (to our confusion).
Eventually we got going and we were off the track half an hour later. First thing we saw when we emerged from the forest was a coffee cart. Of course, we had to stop for a flat white. It wasn’t supposed to be open yet but when chatting to the owner he explained that he opened specially for a contingent of 300 American cyclists who were about to descend from their cruise ship and begin an organized bike ride. Luckily, they hadn’t gotten off the boat quite yet. We also found out that the coffee cart owner was one of the water skiers we had seen earlier! He was a Brit who moved to NZ to run a lodge in Anikawa, and apparently was quite a competitive water skier in his day.
After that we began the Link Pathway section of the day. We were expecting this to be mostly road shoulder for 20-ish kilometres, so we were pleasantly surprised by the gravel path through a wide mountain valley, reminding us a bit of Switzerland.
The day was hot but our mood was great. We were taking some time to enjoy the successful completion of the Queen Charlotte Track. Yes, it was not the most challenging trail, but we did a fairly big day yesterday (with over 1000 metres of elevation gain and loss), and we enjoyed it. It feels like we are slowly regaining our mental trail legs.
After an hour or so through the valley, the pathway left the roadside and climbed up a couple of small hills. The views out over the sound were spectacular. Today was just basically a connecting section between two trails, and already it was more beautiful than almost everything we’ve seen on the North Island.
The colour of the water and the green hillsides reminded us a bit of the Howe Sound, a half hour drive from where we live in Vancouver.
Just a couple kilometres before Havelock, we stopped for lunch next to a little waterfall. Somehow there was water coming out of a tree, so we had a unique experience filling up our water there!
Tonight we are staying in a holiday park. It feels like a long time since we stayed in one, and kind of nostalgic. This is also where we sent the first of our food packages from Wellington, so we picked that up and spent a lot of the afternoon figuring out how to split up 11 days off food and how to fit it all into our packs. This is double our previous biggest resupply, so we are a bit nervous about carrying everything! We also hit up the Four Square for some beans, rice and vegetables and Elliot cooked us a proper town dinner tonight. So delicious and satisfying, and a great end to a really nice day on trail.