Day 58: Levin La Vida Loca

December 7, 2019

Kilometers: 1532.8-1536.3

Makahika Outdoors Pursuit Center to Levin Holiday Park 

I’m not used to waiting out storms. I’m much more used to my mom saying “it will pass just keep paddling” as we head towards very obviously threatening black storm clouds. However, as a group we decided it was best to head into the town of Levin for the weekend and wait out the storm. The mountain range is the tallest point in a skinny country and gets winds from both the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is set to rain 5 inches this weekend and get below freezing with the wind chill. We figured it would be more fun to sit around in town with a few beers than stranded up in a hut in the range. 

Everyone was up around 8 and content with waiting for the owners of the Outdoors Pursuit Camp to take us into town, as they offered the day before. Knowing we would be in town the next two days, which meant eating and drinking for 48 hours straight, I wanted to get some sort of workout in. I decided to run the 13km into town and leave my bag with the others to get driven into town. Apparently the hiking has made me quicker as I covered the 13km in exactly one hour. While running I forgot to take any pictures but there was nothing extremely notable. The storm wasn’t supposed to start until the afternoon and the overcast and breezy morning was perfect running weather. 

Getting low on phone battery, I notified Ethan that I would wait at the McDonald’s for the rest of the group. They took quite awhile to get into town as the owners had a few other errands to run. When they arrived we all decided we needed a beer and walked to the closest bar. We had a few rounds and relaxed. 

Matthew decided to catch the bus to the next closest town to buy new hiking boots before the range. Him and Ethan headed over to the Holiday Park to reserve a cabin before he had to catch the bus. Charlie, Peter and I decided to buy a few bottles of Champaign because Charlie just received his 2018 tax return from Belgium. That makes our IRS look like a very well oiled machine. 

The three of us grabbed some fast food and headed to the holiday park. We got a 5 bed cabin with its own kitchenette and bathroom. We drank the Champaign and hung out for a few hours while doing our laundry. As we sat in the hut we could see the storm hit the mountains. The purple and black storm clouds covered the sky and we could see sheets of raining falling hard. Matthew made contact with another hiker we know who was waiting out the storm up in the first mountain hut on the crossing, the guy said it was hailing up there. With the worst of the storm yet to come we figured we had made the right decision. 

At 8 we went to grab dinner in town. The Thai place we went to was actually really good. They also had ice cream. Peter asked for “two balls” of ice cream which was interpreted as two bowls of ice cream. Between the four us we couldn’t finish it all. 

After dinner we looked for a bar in town. Levin wasn’t quite as lively on a Saturday as we’d hoped. We didn’t want to go back to the first bar, which only had the four cheapest beers in New Zealand on tap, and couldn’t find a second bar in the whole town. Levin just wasn’t quite as loca as we hoped it would be.

We went back to the cabin and were asleep by 10. There’s no rush in the morning as we won’t be going anywhere tomorrow. 

-Alex