The Walking Dom

Dec 14

Dec 14 Red Carpet

Mile 640 / KM 1031
Te Kuiti to Taumarunui

Audiobook of the week: 'The Confession’ by Jessie Burton

Song stuck in my head: ‘Now I’m in it’ by HAIM

I miss: Being lazy and lingering in bed all weekend long

The river walk out of Te Kuiti turned out to be way more difficult than it had looked on the map. Rosi hurt her hip, Roland slipped and fell 2.5 meters into the river and hurt his knee and Noemi has had a massive blister on her heel for days. After a morning of cursing and swearing we made it to a dirt road which lead to the 'Timber Trail'. Now THAT is a trail sent from heaven, let me tell you that much. Wide, gradual, smooth, no roots, no bushes, hell it even has toilets! We had hiked about 30km on that red carpet of a trail when it started to rain. Of course it started to rain right at the end of the day and of course we had to walk through a scary overgrown wet forest before reaching camp. The trail always does that. It always throws a nasty thing at you when you think you've done it for the day. It's usually a steep completely unecessary incline, mud, rain, hail or all of the above at once.

Naturally the hut was already full with other hikers when we got there and we had to set up our tents outside while a thunder storm was coming closer and closer. Good times! We were surrounded by old mossy trees and their branches were creaking in the wind which made me feel really uneasy. I dreamed of falling branches and trees that night.

The rain had passed when we woke up. Our shoes and socks were still soaked from the night before and it took forever to get warm. To our amusement one guy who had slept on the floor of the hut had had mice crawling over him during the night :)

The rest of that section was relatively uneventful, except that I ended up fishing with this guy Rob by the river in Taumarunui. He tought me how to cast a spinning reel and I really liked it. Definitely something I could see myself getting into when I get back home. Hopefully won't catch anything though. Wouldn't know what to do with it.

We are off into the mountains now. Tongariro Crossing coming up next and I am beyomd excited about that. We'll be walking right through downtown Mordor in a couple of days. Any rings I should bring along?