Days 84-89: Wellington and South Island Planning

Hooray, we've finished half of the islands! We arrived in Wellington, and have spent the last few days planning for the south island.

We've travelled (walked and canoed) about 1200km so far. The south island has about 1300km of trail, so we're not even halfway finished! We did spend 30 days off the trail though, so we don't expect the south island to take another 90 days.

The walk from Waikanae, the town just after the Tararuas, down to Wellington was very scenic. We had a few relatively easy days, but got some incredible views of Porirua, a Wellington suburb, and Wellington itself.

After the Tauraruas, we took another half day in Waikanae, and got moving just after a double lunch of Indian food and a meat pie. We quickly ran into an unexpected group - Geoff, Audra, and Whitney, all from San Diego. We hadn't heard of them on the trail yet, so were surprised to meet them. Turns out Audra injured her foot on day 2 of their trip, on 90 Mile Beach. It sounded pretty similar to Liz's bone bruise, so we felt their pain. Since then, they'd been walking short amounts every day, and hitchhiking to keep moving forward. It was a lot of fun to hang out with the first Americans we've met since Ngunguru, which was around day 20.

That day was an easy walk down a beach, then into a park full of rolling hills just off the beach. We set up camp in a flat area in the park (the next day we saw no camping signs at the park entrance, whoops). Our bad streak of camping continued overnight - the wind was really strong, and the sandy ground refused to hold our tent stakes. We had to get up in the middle of the night to turn the tent around, and repitch it. We also had to anchor the tent stakes down with our food bags to keep them from popping out. Eventually we got it sorted, and of course the wind completely disappeared shortly after that.

Nice view from Queen Elizabeth Park

The following day was a pretty walk next to a coastal highway (there was a footpath, at least), followed by a meandering footpath that followed an estuary up to Porirua. It was a pretty uneventful day, and we stayed that night at Camp Elsdon, a cheap campground in Porirua.

Scenic highway walking - at least there was a sidewalk

Nice view from the top of the "Goat Track"

Ok, not every part of the trail is beautiful... winding through
Porirua's industrial district wasn't our favorite stretch

Day 86 was great. We started by going up to Colonial Knob, a peak that overlooks Porirua, and has distant views of Wellington. From there, we went on to Mt. Kaukau, which had amazing views of Wellington and its harbor. After that, we wove our way through the city, on a surprisingly hilly route, until we reached a hostel for the night. We were expecting an easy stroll once we got down onto the roads, but Wellington is a very hilly city, and we had to work for it.

View from Colonial Knob, back over Porirua

Scenic hills and winding roads

Having a beautiful day didn't hurt

It's a well established fact that Liz gets a little weird on the trail 

Views of Wellington and the harbor 

A Wellington suburb. We noticed that the houses all have interesting roof colors.
I guess when you live next to lots of hills, that matters more.

Closer to Wellington

We also went through the Botanical Gardens

On day 87, we ran a lot of errands. Getting food supplies on the south island is a little more complicated than on the north island. The towns you go through are much smaller, and often don't have adequate grocery stores. You can hitch to larger towns without much trouble in some places, but others are very remote, and sending a food drop is recommended.

Planners to the core, we ended up deciding to send 4 food drops, totalling 30 days of food. Most people send 2 or 3. We're sending a box to Havelock (Havelock has a grocery store, but it is small, and the section following it requires 9-10 days of food, so we preferred to pay the postage to mail good food), St. Arnaud, Arthur's Pass, and Lake Coleridge. There is one small town without a grocery store, Boyle Village, where we plan to hitchhike out to Hanmer Springs to eat their supposedly amazing meat pies and relax in some hot springs.

After buying a ridiculous amount of food (we spent $750 on 33 days of food) and paying an outrageous amount of postage, I'd recommend that other TA walkers skip the Havelock and Lake Coleridge boxes. From Havelock you can hitch to Nelson for better food choices, and from Lake Coleridge you have to hitch around the unfordable Rakia River anyway, so you might as well go into Methven for food.

Our Pak N Save receipt needed a panorama

I got the longest, worst haircut I've ever had - it took 45 minutes and was totally uneven. Glad I'll be in the wilderness for another few months. Also, beard fans may be dismayed to know that I had the neck beard shaved off. Calm down, the rest is intact.

On day 88 we were back on the trail, briefly. We had about 8kms left to the bottom of the north island, and we met up with Ben, Laura, Manu, and Johanna to finish it off. It was, again, surprisingly hilly. The north island didn't give up easily. But we had some more great views, and before we knew it we were in a park/playground, surrounded by kids on swings, drinking champagne at a plaque marking the end of the trail on the north island.

Approaching the end

Gang of 6 at the end

We made it (halfway)!

Champagne cork popping. 10 meters behind us were about 20 children under the age of 6

After that, we caught a bus back into the city, got some beers and burgers, then all went our separate ways. Ben is taking 11 days off to volunteer with the DoC on an island up north, so there is a good chance we won't see him on the trail again! We've been leapfrogging him for hundreds of kilometers now, it's kind of sad parting ways. But we have big TA technology plans for when we finish, so even if we don't see each other in person, I'm sure we'll keep in touch. We also heard from James & Michelle - Michelle is taking some time off of the trail, and James sped ahead and is probably 5 or 6 days past us now, so we may not see him for quite a while either. All of our early TA friends splitting up! It does seem that we are closer to the middle/back of the pack after our time off though, so there are plenty of new people to get to know.

Post-beers at a pub

We spent day 89 packing up and mailing the food, and trying to catch up on emails and the blog. We stayed with Angela and Nik again after our first night in Wellington. It was great to see them again, and their house was a perfect place to spread all of our food and gear out while we got organized.

Old shoes vs. new - these started out looking the same, believe it or not

Goodbye shoes, it was fun while it lasted

Packing up 30 days worth of food

Our ferry to the south island leaves at 8am tomorrow, so we'll be up really early and on to the next part of our adventure!