Te Araroa, Day 119

Starting at 7:30 this morning, as usual, currently. There are about 36 km to go to the highway from where we can get to our next accommodation. These 36 km are on a wide and very dusty gravel road. Whenever a car passes by, we get wrapped into a white cloud of dust.

Walking a gravel road is easy under normal circumstances. Only my right foot does not like even surfaces. So I try to walk where there is the most gravel to prolong the time until the pain becomes too much. We walk at the same pace today, which I'm glad about; it makes the slightly dull walk easier. At around 28 km, the pain in my foot worsens, and the last 7 km become very hard.

At the highway, we get prepared for a hitch to Te Anau, to get to our accommodation for the night. While X is putting his backpack down, I already stretch out my thumb, thinking to take it back again since the approaching car is a commercial minivan shuttle.
But I am too lazy to lower my arm. I see the driver shortly turning to his passengers, and then he stops surprisingly. I am flabbergasted. This is interesting. I expect him to offer us a ride for a charge, but no, he takes us on board and lets us off just at the beginning of town. We walk another kilometer and finally get to our accommodation. We drop our bags to add another walk to the supermarket and get some pizza before we finally can I dust ourselves and stretch our legs.

From now on, we will deviate from the official trail until we get to Invercargill. The official trail will lead through 40 km of knee-deep muddy forest and poorly marked stretches described as "The ground trail is light, or non-existent, so care and concentration are required to travel from marker to marker," among others. Right now, we just want to get to Invercargill and then Bluff, the very end of the South Island. We will still walk but take a parallel route to the official route along roads and bike lanes. My feet won't like that very much, but I am not willing to scramble through hard-walkable terrain and constant mud at this point.

Anyway, tomorrow morning at 8, we will take a shuttle that brings us back to the junction at the highway where we hitched from today. From there, we will walk to Mossburn. First along the road, then we can follow a bike lane for about 7.5 km. But until then, let sleep give us some rest.

Walking on the gravel road...:

There was no water until about 10 km before the end and we were very happy when we finally got to it:

And some more gravel road:

Entering the Village In Hotel in Te Anau after picking up food in town, I am greeted by a rainbow: