Day 128 - reunited
Queenstown —-> Taipo hut
82km shuttle + 24km walk
I had a fairly cruisey start to the morning as I said goodbye to Josh again and headed into QT to meet the bus who would be taking me across the lake. The next section of the trail followed the Greenstone track, which despite only being on the other side of Lake Waitatapu, was actually about an hour and a half drive away from QT. It’s a big lake.
Coffee in hand I walked into the bus company shop and saw John sitting there! He had thought I’d be getting the bus today too so was half expecting to see me but I thought he would be behind me forever more for sure! Turns out he skipped the section from Wanaka to Glendhu bay so was able to catch me and had walked into QT yesterday. I was super stoked to have a walking buddy again.
After a short stop in Glenorchy, the bus dropped us at Greenstone car park and by 9.45am we were heading up the trail.
Lovely soft leaves underfoot and a wonderfully pleasant trail alongside the river, it was easy to speed along.
The drizzle couldn’t quite make up its mind whether it was coming or going and I spent most of the morning taking my rain jacket off and then putting it on again twelve minutes later.
We had lunch in the very boujie Greenstone hut, complete with separate warden quarters and proper flushing toilets.
The afternoon trail took us away from the forest - we chose to take an old farmers route through the tussock marshland rather than continue on through the forest which was getting a little tedious. According to the notes we’d both read, the farmers route was supposed to be a heap quicker, but with the amount of bog and mud that we came across, I highly doubt it was.
The weather continued to confuse us, one moment we were struggling to see; the rain blowing right into our faces…
…and the next we were squinting; walking straight into bright sunshine.
We were technically now walking on the Mavora walkway, and as we walked past the first few Mavora lakes, the rain decided to come back and bed in properly this time.
We fought our way through a few km of high tussock, failing to find any sort of official trail. It ended up being easier to just bush bash our way through rather than spend too long searching for anything solid.
We reached Taipo hut just as the hail started up. A mug of hot chocolate always seems to taste better when it’s hammering it down outside.
With just John and I in the hut again, we flicked through the intentions book as we always did to see who’d been through in recent days. Two guys Leon and Ian were just ahead - a day, maybe even half a day - they had been for a while. It seemed they were tracking the same pace as me and John so I wondered and hoped, but doubted we’d ever catch up to them.
The rain and hail continued for a lot of the evening and I had to put all my layers on in my sleeping bag to keep me toasty.
