Day 85: Life Admin
January 3, 2019
Kilometers: 2047.2-2059.4
Boyle Flat Hut to Hanmer Springs Motel
Again we were up at 6:30 and out at 7. Not having to pack up a tent makes life a lot easier. We only had 12 kilometers to walk but had a needed “Life Admin” day, which is a term i’m stealing from our friend Vikki who we walked with earlier on the trail.
Our life admin required new shoes among some other things. All three of us have tears in our shoes. Charlie’s shoes have approximately zero kms left on them whereas me and Peter can probably make it another 5 days or so in ours with some proper duct taping. But since the South Island has so few towns we needed to hitch into Hanmer Springs to buy shoes while we had the chance.
The twelve kms went by fast, taking us only two and half hours. The mud from last nights rain slowed us down a bit. We walked through the Boyle valley towards the highway.
I arrived at Boyle village just before 9:30. Despite being named a village it is just a campsite, a singular business and a bus stop. Not much of a village.
We sent our resupply boxes to the one business there, which is an outdoors recreation center. They gave us our boxes and we repacked our bags.
We then headed down to the road to hitch to Hanmer Springs. It was 40-50kms to the town. We figured it’d be a quick hitch with all the holiday traffic. Unfortunately after the first hour went by we started to lose hope.
Just before trying for two hours a couple pulled over to offer the three of us a ride. They had a just spent the week tramping themselves. We hopped in excited to get to civilization. It took about 40 minutes to reach the town.
When we did we got out and headed to a restaurant on the Main Street. We charged our devices and ate like monsters. We each had fish and chips, an order of garlic bread and a few beers. After eating I ran across to the I-site (info center) to see where we could stay for the night. The town had zero rooms or even tenting options available. We were pretty unworried though cause us hobo hikers always seem to figure something out.
We walked to the outdoors store and each bought a new pair of trail runners from the limited selection. I was told they would be super expensive but I guess those people have never been to DC cause I thought they were a bargain. Hopefully this is the last time I spend money on trail runners for the trail though.
Apparently holding an emergency room is a big thing in New Zealand and we lucked into one again at a motel. It had two beds and a pull out couch.
After dropping our bags off we snagged some ice cream and then went to another bar for appetizers and drinks. Like I said yesterday, we can now eat nonstop and weren’t gonna pass up the opportunity once we were finally in a town.
We then hit the grocery and liquor store for some treats. This whole trip I haven’t understood Charlie and Peter’s obsession with popsicles until I found out today that they don’t have popsicles at all in Belgium.
We bought some raspberry popsicles, some coke and a bottle of rum. After a few drinks and watching some miserable TV shows we went to dinner at an Chinese restaurant.
Tomorrow we have a few things to buy before we hitch back to the trail. Let’s hope we get one quick so we can have a big day. Not totally sure how good cell reception will be the next week or so but I’ll be posting as often as I can!