Te Araroa Day 78, Boyle Village to Hurunui Hut

Starting km: 2095
Finishing km: 2138
km covered today: 43

Rain, with some heavy falls.
That was the forecast for the next couple of days.  Oh well. With the ridiculously warm and dry early summer NZ has has I guess I owe the trail gods a few days of walking in the rain. So long as it's not so much as to make the next section's river crossings un-doable I can deal with it.

After picking up a nice loaf of bread for breakfast at the Hanmer Bakery the next order of business was to get back to where I'd left off walking the previous day.  I went high tech and actually made a sign indicating that I was headed to "Lewis Pass/West Please :-)" because I figured most people wouldn't know where Boyle Village was. As it turned out after about 15 minutes of waiting I was picked up by a woman who worked at the Boyle Outdoor Education Centre. We had a grand chat in the 45 minute drive back to Boyle.

The trail started slowly, walking along through grass parallel to SH73 before heading down and crossing the Boyle River (an easy crossing, no more than knee deep despite the rain overnight and continuing.)

From there it was a walk through a mix of grass, rocky riverbed, manuka and young beech trees. At one point I walked through a grove of immature beeches all completely covered in black fungus with a bit of light green moss and fern about. In the dark grey morning light everything visible was pure black or vibrant green. It was really beautiful (note that this is the last time in this entry that you'll hear me talk about beautiful beech forest.)

The rest of the morning followed the Hope Valley sometimes in forest, sometimes in the grassy, wide bottom of the valley.  Though the views were obscured by mist and light rain, I sometimes like this effect. It mutes all the colours  except, seemingly, green, producing a pastel effect with bright green accents.

Around 15:00 I arrived at Hope-Kiwi Lodge. Lodge indeed! The bunks had storage lockers beneath them and there was a lovely old wood stove in the centre of the kitchen/common area. And the floor was red linoleum, which felt a bit odd to me.

Fancy hut or not I decided to push on to the next hut. The weather had been at the nicer end of the forecast. It had really been a day of drizzle rather than rain. The next day I mightn't be so lucky.  An easy 18km. No problem!

It started out that way. The first 5km or so melted away, the way the morning had, seeming to take no time at all.  Most of the climb up to Kiwi Saddle was so gentle that I barely noticed it happening.

After that it went downhill. My tummy started to feel a bit unwell.
The trail became annoying. Despite the fact that there was no significant geography in the way it just couldn't stay straight or level for 5m at a time.
The forest got seriously boring. There was some moss on the ground, and beyond that there were... Beech trees. The canopy was mature beech trees. The understory (where there was one) was young beeches. The ground cover? Beech seedlings.
At least the birds were okay. A few robins, and several riflemen. These guys are so cute. They must be among the tiniest non-humming birds in the world.

The rain also stopped. This sounds like a positive, but as my shorts dried out they became merely damp rather than soaked, and started chafing my legs. In the end I decided to take them off and walk in my underwear. I was pretty sure I wouldn't run into anyone coming the other way, and it was way  more comfortable.

I was soooo happy when, after crossing some pasture, then a swing bridge over the Hurunui River, I arrived at the Hurunui Hut and saw smoke rising from the chimney. It was so cozy inside.
Already there were a young Dutch couple and Thierry, a Frenchman I'd met back in Northland. Later we were joined by Curly, the ultra runner I'd met on my Waiau Pass day.

A big pot of noodles, my clothes hanging above the fire to dry, some reading, some chocolate. I was a happy sleeper in a hut.