Te Araroa Day 30, Pirongia to Waitomo

Starting km: 849
Finishing km: 899
km covered today: 50

The morning I departed from the Pahautea Hut on Pirongia was just as lovely and clear as the previous evening.  The Hihikiwi trail leading down was just as steep and even muddier.

The forest was pretty enough, but most of my attention was devoted to not sinking too deep in the mire. Despite my best efforts I still managed to sink up to my right knee in the mud. I stopped to take a photo of this and was more entertained than disappointed when less than a minute after having done so, I sunk knee deep in mud on my left leg.

Rather to my surprise this ended before too long, with us arriving at an road having only descended 300 or so of the mountain's 959m.

Soon after getting back on to road I popped down from a bridge to wash my legs in the river beneath. Two noteworthy things happened during this:
1. A concerned motorist pulled over on seeing my unattended pack by the side of the bridge (nice to know people care).
2. I saw a large dead fish in the river. It didn't really look like it belonged in a river, but whatever. I was washing my feet, not drinking the water. Moments later I saw another, then another, then several more, each bigger than the first. For some reason there were 8 large (up to 60cm long) dead ocean fish in this fast flowing stream 400m above sea level.

From here the day was mostly road walking with a bit of pasture thrown in. Very soon after leaving the volcano's flanks, the rocky outcrops changed to layered limestone, emphasizing the fact that I was headed towards NZ's most famous caves.

I'd planned to stop a bit short of Waitomo at a caving group hut, but when I arrived a school group was already occupying it and the posted rules relating to camping were very far from clear.

So in the end I soldiered on, once again walking a bit further than planned, once again arriving after dark.

Before long I discovered that one of my neighbours at the Waitomo Holiday Park was a fellow TA  walker. An older Kiwi named Paul. I did my (possibly not very good) best to chat politely as I prepared and ate dinner. After 50km on the trail I had one final goal for the day, which was achieved moments after my final forkful of couscous and as rapid and polite a good night as I could muster: Bed.