We had an early start this morning to finish the last part of this section with 23km. Got cold in the night – had frost outside this morning on the lawn. It was a nice mixture of beech forrest and tussock that just took turns the entire day.

Tussock looks very nice but is quiet a pain to walk through. It is always a mixture of a nice and padded walk, stumbling, falling over or/and falling in one of of the hidden streams that circle through these fields. This explains also why you don’t manage to make more than 2km an hour in this terrain. Nevertheless a very beautiful scenery and again a great reminder of many Lord of the Ring scenes…
On one of the tussock fields we suddenly got attacked by a pair of falcons! They flew around 40 attacks on us approaching very low and directly for our head always. They took Justin’s cap and pair of sunglasses and kept attacking us. Started from their lookout on the side valley flying very low – preferably approaching from behind. We actually had to fight them with our walking poles in the last moment of their attack not to get hit. Amazing flying skills and absolutely fearless! We only found out that they actually have their nests in the tussock grass pads – so I guess we were just getting a little bit to close… Rest of the stroll went fairly easy with just going up and down in the slope of the valley.

 

 

Last six km on a gravel road over farmland where we got a ride from a nice farmer from Te Anau to the city.

First stop: supermarket. Ice cream, fruits, beer, Gatorate, orange juice… Jiehaaa!

Stayed at the Kiwi Lakeside in a one bed cabin with shared facilities. Shower felt great!

213km and 7% done.

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