Day 111 - Te Anau

Icicles on the tent this morning. I believe fall is getting closer. The nights are colder, snow on the mountains. It’s a weird thing, watching the seasons go by. I’ve been on a single adventure so long it seems unreal that I’ve watched an entire season go by. I began in spring, and yet here we are, icicles on my tent. 

39 km day today to the highway is the plan, then hitch into town for a night and a resupply. The day went pretty straight forward. Threes parts, a forest section, a farm section, and a road section. 

The forest section was surprisingly well maintained, only a few blowdown areas, nothing too bad. Easy pleasant forest walking for the morning.

Late morning brought the Farm section. By the sounds of it it’s going to be a rough slow section, not well maintained compared to the forest. Most of the section was spent walking along the fence lines including my 11am photo. I’m leaving the mountains for the flat lands. This section was a lot of losing the path in the tall grass and wading through vegetation. The grasses were above my head and I kept stumbling around. Gorse and other spiky plants scratched me so bad that my legs were bloody. Embrace the chaos that is the Te Araroa I guess. 

The road walk went much more smoothly, I could actually walk without tripping every step. A simple 11km of gravel road and I hit the main road from which I hitched to the town of Te Anau. The gateway to the Fjordlands. I’ll spend the night here and decide what to do in the morning.