Day 35: Beer for Lunch
November 14th, 2019
Kilometers: 834.5-870.6
Farm Campsite to Te Kuiti AirBnB
It was cold and rained for most of the night. Not a little drizzle either, it was a pretty consistent downpour.
We had agreed to wake up early and be ready to walk by 7:15. Alex was set up a good bit away from the Belgians and myself so we had to yell just to hear each other over the rain. I think the Belgians thought we were going to wait it out as they were much slower to wake up than usual.
At 6:40, Alex took advantage of a small break in the rain and packed up his tent and took off. He was going to tackle the farm route that Guthook suggested despite the chance of it being muddy and slow going because of the rain. Charlie, Peter, and myself had found a road route that would be 2.5km longer but at least we knew the conditions would be more suitable for walking. We both got our tents went while taking them down. At 7:05, we took off in full rain gear on our long day to Te Kuiti.
The first kilometer we had went through farmland and the looks were not promising. There were huge puddles and slippery mud patches everywhere and we decided there that we would take the road the whole way to Waitomo, our lunch spot.
The storm was bone-chilling. It was the awful combination of cold, pouring rain, and wind. The temperature when we set off was just 50 degrees and the gusts consistently reached 30mph. To top it all off, we were still at a high elevation and there was almost no cover. We were at the mercy of the storm. Team Belgium was in low spirits.
Visibility on the road was as little as 100 meters at times and photographing anything made it look like a horror film.
We continued on in the rain for over two hours before the storm started to break.
Once the sun came out, the mood immediately changed. Everyone became talkative again and the scenery became amazing.
The walk after the sun came out was a breeze. We were making almost 6kph all while drying out.
After almost 15km, we came to Te Anga road where we stopped for a break and laid out some of our wetter gear to dry.
I texted Alex to see how his trek was going. He was slightly ahead of us and absolutely loving the track he took.
He said it was a really well maintained forest track that had a river crossing and a really cool airstrip. Although, he mentioned you would need to be insane to try and land a plane their.
After walking along Te Anga road past the entrance for the famous glowing Waitomo Caves, we found ourselves in the little town of Waitomo.
We went to a restaurant called Tomo but arrived before they opened. With it being sunny out, we took full advantage of the opportunity and set out our tent to dry.
At noon, the owner opened it up and we went in and immediately got ourselves a beer.
The food was adequate but just having a hot meal with a cold beer was so satisfying after how miserable the start of our day was.
I had my beer and then downed multiple glasses of water. The boys each decided it was a good idea to have a second IPA each.
After lunch, we set back off on a short afternoon of just 12km. We were all super full so our pace was definitely not the fastest.
We left the road and went over a stile, which warned us that we were about to walk through a 2km bull farm. Something we were not about to do while full. We followed the directions on the detour and after a few kilometers, met back up with the trail.
We went through a dense Gorse brush which was surprisingly slippery. It dumped us out onto farmland which had been recently turned over.
We walked through the farmland for a while before crossing a stile onto a ridge line which wound down to the road below. Charlie insists the purple flowers are poisonous.
At the bottom, we made our way along a farm road for a short while before cutting through a field and across our first suspension bridge of the trip.
We walked through a forest after the suspension bridge and ended up on more farmland. The pasture lead up a big hill which felt like Mt Everest with us still being so full. Charlie multiple times claimed he was going to vomit.
We hiked back down from the hill to the highway which we walked along for 3km to the town of Te Kuiti, the sheep shearing capital of the world.
We called multiple motels but there was no vacancy in the entire town. We eventually settled on an AirBnB which ended up being super strange. There was promise of a hot tub and a dryer, neither of which were true. Alex was pissed.
Despite that, I was happy to have a bed and a hot shower.
Charlie made an amazing meal of salmon and pasta with a cream sauce and broccoli.
I’m going to bed happy tonight as my feet still feel great and tomorrow should be a short day.
-Ethan