Today – 34km from Camp Stream Hut to Tekapo village

Total – 2379.0kkm

Waking up I felt sluggish but good after yesterdays efforts. It’s the best feeling having a big day, and having an extra few minutes lay in the next morning.

Slowly sounds of humans emerging from tents wakes me up and I see a whole bunch of familiar faces. Liv and Dan are here, having hiked to Stag saddle yesterday, and Jeanette [Aussie] is here who I haven’t seen since the Queen Charlotte.

Had a good chat to everyone, it was great to see everyone and hang out. It’s amazing how collectively we all know so many people and have hiked with heaps of different groups at one stage or another.

Had a banana, took the tent down and wandered off a bit later at 9.30am. Yea, no early mornings lately! As Emeric said the other day, it’s either 5am or 9am nothing in between.

E & I left and Dan & Liv followed.

Emeric provided some good entertainment by having a sit down[fall] in some tussock and laughing uncontrollably .

Apart from watching our footing, it was easy walking watching for orange marker poles. Emeric gets a bit distracted sometimes and zooms off trail, I’ll be waving from behind that hes wildly off track. On this instance I started climbing a hill we were going up then he saw me half way up and realised his mistake. Oops.

Awesome views of lake Tekapo. We kept glancing back to see Stag Saddle as some of our friends were doing it today and the weather was definately worse than we had yesterday.

After a break and some chill walking, the weather picked up. Wind, and rain came in, and we were walking on the edge of the storm. It was kind of cool! We stopped to shelter and snack behind a giant rock and let some mountain bikers pass and layered up , it was fleece and raincoat and beanie and gloves time.

Toasty and warm, continued hiking in pretty crazy wind.

The sun was on our left and the storm on our right, we stayed on the edge the whole time, and found a sheltered and dry spot for lunch. Whoop for excellent lunch spots!!

Cruised down the rest of the track to the road, where we had 13km left to hike back to Tekapo on a dirt road to connect the section.

It was hot and windy. We were tired. I think having some big days and long days were catching up and the last 5km it was a struggle. Once we hit Tekapo, we tried our luck getting a hitch to Twizel, where we had organized to stay at a Trail Angel’s spot, and where we had finished the trail before going back to do the Stag Saddle section.

Unfortunately, it was a crap time of day for getting a ride. We detoured and got chips from the 4square and then tried again and Eric from the USA , who was hiking and camping NZ picked us up and took us right to the doorstep of the Trail Angel, chur bro!!

Met Dylan again and he stayed at the trail Angel’s. There was another guy Sam from the Netherlands there too.

Denise, and her generous family live in Twizel on some land and have a collection of small huts and a sleepout including an amazing hobbit house. Absolutely incredible.

We enjoyed sharing a few beers together. It would be our last night with Dylan, as he was heading off trail to work for a little while. We will miss you bro!

The hobbit house had two couches for sleeping and one mattress on the floor in the main area. The boys were nice and let me have the notch at the side with my own doublebed. Luxury!!