travel ·

DAY 61

This morning we woke up to a light rain and packed up quickly trying to avoid getting too much stuff wet. Then we formed a human chain to get everything down the hill to the boats.

Once the boats were loaded, we had a hard paddle up stream to get to the landing point for the bridge to nowhere. The bridge was built as part of an effort to create a road the would run east to west across New Zealand, however that road was never built and so the bridge goes nowhere now. It was a 40min walk to the bridge thru an area that was land granted to returning war veterans to farm. But it turns out that area is not great for farming, so no farms exist there today.

After the walk back to the boats we headed towards camp. On route it started raining hard and our guides made the call to skip landing for lunch and push on to the camp site so we could have lunch under shelter at the camp site and get to the bar earlier. This campsite has a lodge near by with a fully stocked bar and a flushing toilet.

After hauling all the gear up a very muddy hill, we made our way to the bunks in the hut that we had booked for the night. With the pouring rain we were very happy to have a dry bed to sleep in and have a place to hang our wet clothes up.

After getting cleaned up in some outdoor showers and putting on some blissfully dry clothes we walked to the lodges for drinks, the flush toilet, and the epic views.

After enjoying the lodge fully, we made our way back to camp for dinner and then bed in a dry bunk.