Day 86: Unhitchable

January 4, 2019

Kilometer: Off trail 

Hanmer Springs Motel

Some days you just don’t get lucky. We had plans to hitch back to the trail today and begin the next section. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a hitch. It’s hard to believe but for seven hours we only got 7kms out of town on one hitch. 

We woke up early and headed to breakfast. We each got huge breakfast burgers at 8:30 that had beef, bacon, eggs, onion rings and tomato on them. We scarfed them down quickly and were all still hungry. So we went to a bakery and a got a muffin. I then proceeded to get some ice cream for breakfast desert. 

We then bought the last couple things we needed from town. I got another charging cord, we got new gas canisters for our stoves and went to the pharmacy. At 10:30 we were ready to start our hitch finding effort. We started at the edge of town near the youth hostel. We took turns every ten minutes standing up and holding our thumb out. We even made a fancy hobo sign.

After an hour we decided to walk a km out of town towards the highway to the gas station. We figured this was a good place to find someone willing to give us a lift. 

We rotated for three hours outside the gas station. Hundreds of cars passed by us. Some honked to acknowledge us but that was just more infuriating. After three hours we finally got picked up by two nice kiwi women that took us the seven kms from the town to the highway. 

When we got to the highway we had somewhat renewed spirits that we could get to the trail and do some hiking today. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Another three hours passed as we took turns standing. 

I guess the posh tourists visiting this expensive town for the weekend were too good to pick up some lowly hikers. We had just done laundry and showered too, we wouldn’t have even made their car smell bad! 

At 4pm we decided to give up. Even if we got the 45 min ride to the trail we wouldn’t make it to the first hut by dark. I booked us a bus that will take us there late tomorrow afternoon. The bus wasn’t running today. 

We started walking back to the town and rebooked the same room we had last night. It was expensive but very nice and in a great location. As we walked back we crossed the bridge the started talking to two women our age at an overlook.

They offered to give us a ride back into town. We piled into the backseat and put our packs on top of ourselves. It was cramped to say the least but worth the ride. 

When we got back we relaxed until dinner. We went to go get pizza. We then got ice cream again for desert. I’m on a big time ice cream kick right now.

Tomorrow we have a bus scheduled to pick us up 3:45pm. Not being able to get a hitch set us back about a day and a half. It was nice to have another extended rest but i’m ready to do some serious hiking now. We will look to push this next section through Arthur’s Pass National Park a day quicker than original so we don’t fall another day behind schedule.