Out of Motatapu - Arrowtown

27km 8hrs

The morning started with the big hill behind the hut. It was quite good to just get straight into it and do most of it in the shade of the eastern hills. I got to the top in about 45min and felt a bit like I had done the hard bit for the day...

On our way down, we ran into Hillary that we had done some of our training hikes with in whangarei. She is heading north with her sister. Having a good time by the sounds of it.

When we got to the bottom we followed the low water 'path' - essentially just walking in the river for 3 hours. I know it's a lot slower than walking on dry land but boy was it refreshing in a scorching day like today. Every so often a gorgeous pool of deep blue would come up and I would be obligated to drop my pack and become fully submerged.

We had been warned by every person heading north that the sandflys at Macetown were as big as sheep and as numerous as grains of sand on the beach so we had been convinced to carry on through and take a short cut down the 4wd track from there to arrowtown. There for sure were sandflys at Macetown and we have camped at a site thick with sandflys before so didn't take too much convincing.

We had, however, not taken into account how fatigued walking in the river had made us and that the shortcut was 5km longer than we had anticipated so by the time we got out we were pretty exhausted. The track just seemed to go on forever! Paul was one again our savior, tiring up at the trailhead with coconut water and making his amazing burgers for dinner.Baca lagi