Legs and Borders

Rainy day spend walking along the canals and lakes. After a decent breakfast at the holiday park (avocado, banana and Korean rice noodle salad) I started tramping around 6am. Trail was still running along Alps2Ocean cycling route and it was easygoing. It begun to rain at 10am. I caught up with Paul before midday he wasn't feeling it, I knew his tent wasn't rainproof anymore, he even bought couple of bin bags to put over it in case it did. I haven't seen him for the rest of the day and there was a lodge along the trail so perhaps he chose to go there rather than risk getting wet at night. It carried on raining and it was cloudy for the rest of the day, I stopped halfway through the first of three climbs we had to do on this section. It was next to a stream in the forest. It wasn't a campsite but it looked like people camped here often. Tomorrow trail was crossing a fairly big river called Ahuriri which after two days of rai...

Weather wasn't disastrous in the morning and I could have continued on but I felt quite flat after yesterday's marathon and since we just went past the middle point of South Island I decided to have a day off. And a lazy one it was.  I had a cold soaked porridge oats for breakfast but I put in too much water and it was quite soupy but trial had to be done as I was planning to make them on trail from now on. They tasted good. Then I went to town centre for a coffee with Alex from Germany and Sam from Canada, they both stayed at the campsite since yesterday and decided to have a zero day like me, everyone else was gone. We met Paul and his friend David from Austria in town and we all went to AJ's Coffee for a morning brew. Paul wildcamped 10 kilometres before Twizel last night and was planning to stay at the backpackers in a private room tonight. It cost 160$, way above my budget but he liked privacy and was happy to pay it. ...

Big day, it actually felt like two and might lead to my zero day tomorrow. I decided to take the challenge of walking Tekapo Canal in one day, there were few reasons for that. It was supposed to be raining the day after, there was no official campsite between two towns (lots of good flat camp space though) and the water sources were scarce. I started hiking at ridiculous time, it was 3:30am when I set off with the head torch on. Hiking alongside the canal in the dark was fun. I switched off the torch and followed the white line of the asphalt road, sky was jam packed with stars. It was like walking on a giant treadmill spectating the universe. It was cold and humid, I had to wear all the layers to keep warm. After 4am I could see first glimpses of the sunrise and at 5:30am the light spectacle really kicked off. Trail was following the Alps2Ocean cycling path for the whole day so the grading was very generous for th...

"Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one's home" Fran Lebowitz I woke up in the morning just before the sunrise. The tent was completely frozen and so was the moss around it. I've put all of my layers on and started to pack up. To be fair, it wasn't that bad, it wasn't raining and wind was minimal, after 20 minutes I was on my way down from the Stag Saddle. I stayed off trail last night, so I had to find my way back to it. I followed a stream that was crossing it on my gps. The trail I chose to reconnect with was an old Te Araroa running through the valley, the new, more scenic one was higher up on the ridge but since I couldn't find it yesterday (no markers) I decided to gave up on it. Alternate was going through the tussock land, not many people was using it, the trail wasn't easy to spot but it was marked really well. I was walking from one marker to the other and it took about 3 hours to reach the Camp Strea...