Day 131 - bog tussock hole
Te Anau —-> Aparima hut
30km hitch + 22km walk
It was a gloriously clear morning as we left the hostel in Te Anau and headed out of town with the aim of hitching a ride back to the trail. I would have loved a day to explore the surrounds of Te Anau - right on the edge of the lake it looked heavenly in the morning dawn.
We stood at the edge of the main road and ten minutes later we were speeding along the highway to the trailhead with a lovely Australian woman who was over to watch her daughter perform with the New Zealand ballet.
She dropped us off and we were beyond excited to see a coffee cart on the farmland we were about to walk through.
Caffeinated and laden up with pastries for my lunch later (which I did not need as I’d already horrendously overpacked for this section), we headed off back towards Lower Princester hut, past the enormous bulls safeguarding the fields on the way.
We reached the hut around 10am and started chatting to two hunters who were just packing up their gear - they’d met two TA hikers yesterday, both heading south. This was Ian and Leon! Ian had set off into the bush late last night, but Leon had stayed the night here… we were so close!
John and I headed off into the forest and climbed up through the tightly packed trees and endless blankets of ferns, marvelling at how the trail can be so beautifully neat in places…
…but so hectic in others.
After lunch perched in an open patch of tussock devouring all our pastries from the coffee cart we spent the afternoon trekking from forest to tussock over and over again.
The forests were freezing cold, but provided welcome relief from the stress of the open meadows. They were pure bog, which would have been fine save the occasional hidden bog that was knee deep. I’d be meandering along listening to my audiobook when *smack*, I faceplant into the wet grass and my feet are stuck in the ground.
The dry tussock wasn’t any better. Firstly it was often waist high which meant twisting and turning to try and find the path and secondly it was so packed together that you couldn’t see the floor, so again every now and then I’d fall into a ditch. At one point I was fully stuck and John had to come drag me out!
Despite the many falls, it was a wonderfully fun afternoon. The imminent bog tussock hole danger made it all quite amusing and the surrounding landscape was incredibly beautiful.
As we nearer closer to our hut for the night, John had already gotten several guesses wrong in our daily “is it a rock or hut” game when we spotted something that could be a rock, or possibly a lion.
It was so remarkably still we were convinced it was a rock, but alas, wrong again - it was a remarkably stationary cow. It was so far from anything we thought it must be a lost farm animal.
We arrived at Aparima hut to see smoke coming from the chimney, we pushed open the door to find a guy inside - both John and I simultaneously said “are you Leon?!” Sheepishly, the guy answered yes… LEON! We’d finally caught up to him after over a month of following his tail. Being ahead of us, he obviously had absolutely no idea who we were - I felt like a stalker who’d finally met their target…!
Leon had wonderfully had the fire going for a little while, heating up the hut just as the sun started to go down. We spent the evening sharing our stories from trail - turns out Leon had started at Cape Reinga only the day before Josh and I. With just over a week left on trail, it felt mad that we were only just meeting now.
