This night was the windiest night on the entire trip. Gusts up to 100km were forecasted. My tent hugged me a few times tonight to a point were I was afraid it would break. And more rain and thunderstorms…
Today was the day! We got up at 5.50h to enough time for the stretch. But of course it was still raining. The day started out nasty already. Having to pack up while it is raining is the absolute worst! Everything gets wet and you are cold and wet before you start.
At one point of time we were ready and followed the markers into the bush.
Until we didn’t see any markers anymore. We checked the GPS and saw that the trail was suppos to go on the neighbor ridge. We were hesitant to go back since the trail was clearly marked to here and going on the other ridge meant at least 40min. We decided to check the other ridge to be safe. We had to drop down through the valley and back up on the other side and found a track – but no markers. We tried to follow the track until it disappeared. We even called the i-Sight for support to find out that DOC had just given out a warning not to enter the forests because of the weather. Ups. But we were still keen on seeing it ourselves. We decided to go back on the marked trail and go for 20min to see how it goes. So we turned around again and 40min later we were back at the same spot from earlier this morning. In total a two hour unnecessary detour. That sucked!
Of course we continued. The trail was not nice. Pointless suffering actually described it perfectly. It was muddy or partly just walking through a lake, a lot of bush bashing in between, permanent rain, the entire bush was soaking wet, wind and not a single view for 15km.
On top we were running out of time due to our detour this morning. So only a 20min break the entire day.
Mae made it out at 4.45pm, so just 45min before sunset. We were very glad. Doing this in the dark would have been the worst and pretty dangerous.
Overall we had to say it was nasty, unpleasant and unnecessary but not as bad as we had imagined. Even though Raetea really had tried to give us a hard time today. Glad we did it!
Camped in front of an old school today which was great. Had some shelter and a roof to unpack, cook and even hang up our stuff on a line. Even a little bench – what a gift! Small things in life…
Hi Flo. Still following your progress with interest now that we are resting in the comfort of home!! Belinda and I remember the problems we had reconciling the GPS track and the markers as we exited Raetea onto the farmland (in rain!) – took us 30 minutes or so of “backwards and forwards” to make sure we were on the right track!! Must have been even worse going the other way!! By the time you read this (on your brand new iPhone 🙁 ) you will be almost finished – well done!!! Still expecting to see you later on the beautiful Kapiti Coast :-). Safe travels for the last leg of the journey. Cheers, Tony and Belinda.