Heaphy Track - 4 to 10 March

Day 13 - 4 March

The dawn colour lasted literally from 6:58 am to 7:03 am this morning. 

An hour later the rain had set in. What a difference a day makes - beautiful yesterday, forlorn today. We have a late checkout and spend the morning doing not much at all apart from walking the (? less than 100 m to coffee)! Value-added (?) by using up all our NZ coins! Yay!

We drove via Richmond (NZ) for petrol before car drop-off - busy place!

Today we start our Heaphy Track Adventure and will be off-line from tomorrow. We will drop off our car at the airport at Nelson and we’ll be collected from there to drive to Takaka for the night! No walking today! Gruelling day tomorrow - and rain predicted! 

We have no idea what we are in for except it will be ‘chalk and cheese’ compared to the QCT.  On that walk we had the luxury of access to our luggage at the end of every day and very good accommodation. 

On the Heaphy we will carry what we need - including sleeping bags - and stay in DOC huts. 

No plan B either. On the QCT we could have taken a boat between points if we needed. No such option on the Heaphy - you walk in and you have to walk out.

So we are picked up and it is 2 hours to Takaka - huge winding steep climb all the way until we descend steeply to the grazing lands below.

Jenni, who picks us up (along with Kiwi siblings Carol and Warwick - he’s done the walk before!!! - plus Christine a Kiwi also plus John an American who is contemplating buying the business from Jenni), keeps up a bright and cheerful and informative patter as the vehicle grunts its way up the valley including that the average age of her groups is 68 and that she recently took a bunch of late 70 year olds! I’m not feeling so mad after all, but time will tell!

When we get into our hotel it is by now about 5 pm. We spend the next half an hour or so getting our packs ready for tomorrow …

Then we walk into town: burgers and beers at the Roots Bar. Very hippy here. Weed Capital of NZ I’d say. We are definitely outliers. 

But the food is good, especially with the wood fire burning and an Irish coffee to finish to ward off the cold.

And now the rain has set in. The weather I would describe as’bleak’: the wind is blowing madly and howling; it is raining in squalls; also cold. Electric blanket on tonight! Not looking good for tomorrow …

I have been collecting sandfly bites. I react quite significantly. Five big red ones so far.

Offline from tomorrow.