We woke up early to get the tents down before there was to much traffic on the street. But when I woke up the entire tent was wet from the outside – soaking wet! Way to much for normal condensation. When I opened the tent I knew why. We were in the middle of a cloud with max 30m visibility and everything was wet.

So we packed up the wet tents. I hate it! Not only that e everything gets wet but also it gets heavier… We started on a gravel road and the ambience was very mystical within the clouds. The heron though didn’t care.

The trail continued through private land which was very beautiful. Again a lot greener than the last weeks and the valleys just had a different touch. We continued in good pace and progressed quickly on the trail.

Met a Kiwi who told us there was a thunderstorm warning for the afternoon so we had a good excuse to stay at Double hit after 20km and not pushing it another 16km over a saddle with 900m of ascent. We had a snack at the beautiful old hut and all had a long sleep. I guess our bodies all called for the break! We were also happy not having to climb the saddle in the heat of the afternoon. So we just stayed cleaned and dried our gear and relaxed.


I have the feeling I caught an infection in my left eye. It was crusty and wet this morning and it still itches. So I cleaned all my lenses carefully, took out the lenses and Jay helped me to rinse my eye with fresh water. Let’s hope it will be ok until we hit the next town and I can get medication for it. There is always something I guess. If it’s not the feet than something else breaks or hurts. I am getting old…

Thought Breann and Jay how to play Skat since there was a deck of cards in the hut. Great fun since I also taught them the German words: reizen, stechen, ja, weg, drücken, Trumpf, “Geben, hören, sagen, weitersagen” and so on ?

Early night since we will get up at six tomorrow.

Of course no thunderstorm but a beautiful sunset.


Learning of the last five weeks: never trust any Kiwi weather forecast – it always turns out to be different than expected.