Start – Te Anau
Finish – Lower Princhester Hut
Daily Distance – 8 km
TA Distance – 2813 km
Bluff Distance – 228 km
As a prelude to this final 8-10 day section, I decided to rest up and have a short day today. A lot of this
final section is over farmland, which doesn’t allow camping, so some of the days will by necessity be
fairly long. I had also heard that Te Anau can be a difficult place to hitch out of, so didn’t want to plan a
long day and then have a super late finish if the hitching was slow.
The other perk of a short day is a leisurely breakfast, followed by a second breakfast of coffee and cake.
I’m not sure that 8km really warrants second breakfast, but the lure of cake was too hard to resist. Also, I
didn’t want to. Anyway, after second breakfast, and before I could convince myself that third breakfast
was necessary, I wandered to the edge of town to see about a ride back to the trail. As luck would have it I
only had to wait 20 minutes before getting a ride from a lady on holiday from Belgium. I feel very
fortunate as I’ve spoken to some people today who waited for 3 hours before getting a ride.
My unexpected hitching success has allowed for an exceedingly leisurely walk to tonight’s hut. Just as
well really as I continued my usual practice of choosing breakfast cake based primarily on giant size this
morning. Slowly wandering up a gravel road through farmland I spent a long time trying to improve my
animal photography skills. So not so many mountain or scenery photos today, but if you like cats, cows or
sheep you’re in for a real treat…
