Te Araroa Day 92, Stody's Hut to Wanaka

Starting km: 2573
Finishing km: 2620
km covered today: 47

I woke up planning to have a relatively easy day. But the best laid plans never survive contact with the trail, and by the time I'd made it to the summit of Breast Hill and finished the first leg of the day I'd decided that maybe it'd be a good plan to go all the way to Wanaka. (This was based partly on the desire for a shower and real food and partly on the fact that it would then be able to make it to Queenstown in two days instead of three.)

So after mountain-goating my way down the steep and tricky trail to Lake Hawea I called up a few Wanaka backpackers and eventually the i-site who claimed (quite believably) to have found me the last dorm bed in town.

The walk to Wanaka was pleasant and relatively easy (compared to the beast of the previous day). It followed along the shore of Lake Hawea (which, I think may be to Wanaka what Wanaka is to Queenstown), then the Hawea River, then the shore of Lake Wanaka.

I actually arrived at before 17:00, so even managed to pop into the DOC office to chat a bit about the next segment of the walk.  This provided an illustration of how much Wanaka has grown in the six or seven years since I was last there. Back then the DOC office was kind of on its own and the last building on the way out of town. Now it's firmly in town, entirely surrounded by houses.

The hostel I was staying at was a bit institutional, but was pretty clean and had awesome commercial gas stoves in the kitchen (on which I cooked up another one of my 1kg mixed frozen veggie specials.)

On the down side it was alcohol free, which meant I had to walk down to the beach to drink my beer (I'm not sure whether the dry policy was primarily to force guests to drink at the on-site bar so that the owners make more money or to force guests to drink at the on-site bar so that they're not annoying other guests by drinking in the hostel [just annoying them when the bar closes.])

Since this has been a pretty short entry I'll include a few photos of gear that is struggling to make it to the end of the trail: holey, multiply repaired shirt; bent (and getting more bent) trekking pole; shoes with soles that have been glued back on in spots and cut away in others; socks that can't really even be called socks anymore.