TA Day 122

TA Day 122: Saturday 19 April 2025

Louies Stream - Raetea North Side Camping Area

To our surprise, the tent was dry when we woke up.

And it wasn’t raining.

We had our breakfast, but wasn’t very excited about hiking today. But if we squinted we could see some sun coming through the clouds which was good. We really needed some good weather now because we were struggling a lot with finding motivation to hike. The only thing that made us keep going now was the knowledge that we were so close to the end of this hike. We talked about the good times and tried to think of all the highlights and how cool this adventure is. It made it feel a little bit better.

Later of course, it started raining again. And the rain kept coming and going throughout the day. Sometimes the showers were very light, sometimes really heavy. We tried to find some good place to sit down and rest for quite some time, but the rain was so intense and the few patches of grass along the road were absolutely soaked in water, so we couldn’t really sit down there.

For some reason, none of us had looked too closely on FarOut today, so we didn’t know that we would pass a dairy today. But as we started to get closer to Mangamuka, and Kim really just wanted to sit down anywhere, Lukas pushed her on and said that there might be somewhere in Mangamuka to sit. He just had a gut feeling that maybe there was benches somewhere. Kim wasn’t too convinced though.

Suddenly we could see one of the classic dairy signs. There were benches outside under a roof, and we almost wanted to start crying out of sheer happiness. As we came closer we saw that they had even more - seats inside, they sold burgers, fries etc. Could it be better!? Not far from the dairy, there was even long drops!

Life was good. We took off all our wet clothes outside, and went in. Sat down by one of the tables and were happy to dry up inside. We ordered burgers, chicken nuggets, fries, and later also an ice cream (the biggest we’ve seen here so far!), all very, very cheap. We really took our time here. Meanwhile, some more rain showers came and went.

Finally we continued again, as we realised that we would arrive in the dark if we stayed longer.

Now we walked along State Highway 1 instead of on a gravel road. It is actually quite good to walk on because there is a lot of space on the side of the road, and not too much traffic today. We crossed the saddle and now it started getting dark. We finally started to dry up too because it hadn’t been raining for some time, and since we were close to today’s campsite, we were happy that we might go to bed dry for once.

But we weren’t going to have it that nice. Just minutes before turning off from the road, it started pouring down. Kim threw her poncho on, and we walked over to a tree on the big grass area and stood there on the muddy and soaking wet grass, wondering what to do now. The rain didn’t show any signs that it would stop anytime soon though, so we eventually started pitching our tent in the rain. But there was some rocks underneath that didn’t help when pitching, which made it take longer than usual. Finally we went inside the tent and started to make dinner. Of course the rain chilled a bit then…

We put on dry clothes and everything felt a little bit better, and eventually we went to bed.

Today's:

Distance: 35.06 km

Ascent: 731 m

Descent: 737 m

Tent nights: 57/122

Weather: Overcast and rain on and off throughout the day, some heavy showers