Te Araroa (day 5) - Saddle Road Campground to Mangamuka Campground / mile 100

"Ultralight, cold at night" Didi, a hikers proverb (apparently)

A crazy day of hiking! The trail was going through a rain forrest and the path was extremely muddy, sometimes up to a knee high, it took me 8 hours to go through 16 kilometres of it but it was well worth it, I've never walked through such a terrain, forest was extremely dense and surprisingly quiet, it rained for few hours but it didn't really influence the condition of the trail.
At the end I couldn't even take my shoes off to wash them in the stream, I had to untie them and force it off my feet. I managed to reach Mangamuka just before the local convenience shop (or dairy as it's called by locals) has been shut at 5pm, bought a coke, peanut butter ice-cream and portion of chips and paid 10$ for a night at the local campground by the radio station. I've been joined by Miriam from Switzerland and not long after Didi and Tobyn I've camped with last night, we had our dinners, fed the local cat Lucky with tuna and salami and set off to bed just before 9pm.

The whole night cows on the field nearby were mooing or rather screaming in pain (I think they were trying to give birth) which lead me to having some horrible dreams, it's curious how we, the living beings channel and process things, it all stopped at 4 in the morning (for a while at least).

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