Te Araroa (day 16) - Hamilton to Pirongia Forrest / mile 502

"Where are you from!?.. Oh, hail Poland!" Some Random Idiot

"In the Basque country they call this rain 'chirri mirri'. It doesn't get you wet, until it does" Nil

Today definitely had layers, like an ogre. It started well and fairly late, I didn't leave the hostel until 7:30 but managed to catch up with most of my friends and called my grandfather who was getting worried because apparently volcano in Malaysia exploded and he though it was somewhere near. The downsides of being on the other side of the planet.

After leaving the coziness of the hostel behind I started walking through the city along the TA stopping quite frequently to take a picture of a murals scattered along the walls. I went past Hamilton's "Les Mills" which would make any theatre nerd chuckle and had a latte in one of the cafes. Towards the end of city some random idiot asked me where I'm from and Nazi saluted me when I replied. Then I came across a peaceful, American style protest on the side of the road with slogans like: "Treasure Our Maori Language" and "Smoke Free New Zealand" lots of cars passing by were honking in approval. Soon after I met Bruce who was really interested in hosting hikers, I explained the whole "trail angel" business to him best I could and he seemed very pleased with the idea.

The trail eventually left the urban environment and opened up to a quite rugged, green landscape, it reminded me of Pyrenees me and my son hiked a section of recently. Then I met Nil, Spanish guy living.. in Pyrenees, he even thru hiked GR11, the Spanish side of that mountain range. He was a third generation of family living in the mountains and his job was trail maintenance.  

I spend rest of the day hiking with him, it was great to finally have a picturesque way to traverse, until it started to rain. It wasn't that bad to start with but it soon got worse, it also got foggy, the trail wasn't marked well so we had to keep a close eye on our GPS trackers. We kept on going until 6pm when we reached the campsite, it was full of kids. It was some kind of survival camp, they lit a huge campfire and were playing and shouting all over the place, completely disregarding the rain. Unlike them, I was done, my energy levels were low. My clothes were drenched, with no dry ones left as my spares were still wet from yesterday's wash.

We sat with Nil by the campfire for a while and updated our plans. Nil decided to push on another five miles to a hut which would guarantee a dry spot for the night, it was another three hours hike uphill in rain and mud. I decided to stay at the campsite.

Nil went on. I pitched the tent as fast as I could, went inside, completely undressed as everything was soaked, put on the pollar which, next to a spare pair of socks was my only dry clothing left and butt naked I cooked myself some noodles with chicken and peas to refill those precious calories. 

Rain kept on pouring down, it didn't stop three dozen survival kids and their teachers to have fun and games, I was impressed! I wrapped myself in the sleeping bag and joined them in spirit from the warm insides of my tent. Whispers and giggles went on late into the night despite the teachers trying to make everyone quiet, eventually 'chirri mirri' bouncing off the tents like a perfect lullaby, send everyone to sleep.