Legs and Borders

"Easily the best/worst section so far" Gregory In the morning I walked down to The Kuiti and sat outside New World supermarket, it was 6:30am, half an hour before it's opening. I hanged the outer layer of the tent on a disabled parking sing to dry it and sat on the bench, workers were looking at me funny but no one said anything. I logged in to New Worlds wifi and went through the messages, there was one from Nil saying: "I'm staying at a trail angel at Te Kuiti, she told the next section is very bad and people are skipping it and going directly to the mountain" I was quite confused at first but after exchanging few messages I worked it out. Next 10 miles after The Kuiti were quite overgrown (because people were skipping it all the time), Nil was trying to warn me about it and asked me if I'm also skipping. I told him that I might hitch it if it's really that bad. New World opened and I resupplied for four days, it was a bit on a low side...

Great day on the trail! Weather was excellent, cloudy at first, sunny from midday. Path although muddy and wet to start with transitioned into well maintained trail just after the river crossing at mile 531. My feet were back in action after a bit of cutting off dead blister skin with nail clipper yesterday. The ranger responsible for catching 'vermin' in the area had a gruesome habit of leaving carcasses right on the trail, perhaps to teach hikers a lesson about death. There was a rotting goat skeleton, a hanging possum in it's macabre head trap hanging off the tree, and a big fat rat in an 'egg' trap, all within 5 metres of each other. Few miles later I met a hunter walking down the trail, with a scary silver hunting rifle looking like something out of a shooter game. He was hunting deer, I told him I saw few feral goats today, to which he responded that local hunters had a competition running recently of who would kill the most of them. Cl...