Don’t Fight It, Martha, It’s Bigger Than Both Of Us
Somewhere out there in the deep back country is a trail that most New Zealanders have never heard of. Te Araroa. A trail that sends great swathes of predominantly foreigners, a traveling community of these ragged looking smelly people. A great moving trail of homo sapiens on an annual migration South, through the hills of Kiwiland, ambling across the countryside. We share our adventures across the countryside as we come and go, funelling into the weird places we each find to camp, on the margins and outskirts of towns, we sleep in the trees, campsites, hostels and DOC huts, and this lifestyle, life on the trail, we love it.
Our walk from Wanaka to Hawea was along well formed and well used cycle trails.
We stopped over for a night in Albert Town before reaching Hawea, where the weather was overwhelmingly hot and demanded of us that we stop and swim in the lake. We were only passing through, our destination was to camp at the bottom of what would be the next days climb, Breast Hill, 950m in 4km. From there, lunch at Pakituhi Hut ended with a split in our party as Caleb and Sam continued up the track another few hundred meters to the summit of Breast Hill with spectacular views, while Rob, with a stuffed and pained knee, took the more direct route along a flatter farm track to Stody’s Hut. Stody’s Hut, or the hut of no sleep, was a cool old corrugated iron mustarers hut, sleeping six. But already with four occupants upon our arrival.
Paper scissors rock wasn’t in Sam’s favour and decided she was to tent outside while Caleb and Rob, didn’t sleep, but lay inside. Rob on a top bunk listening to a Frenchman with the most amazingly articulated snoring constantly on repeat, Caleb however having a more unpleasant experience as he was lying next to the fellow. Eventually his snoring did cease, the silence short lived as now the guy on the other side of Caleb began snoring. Even worse for Caleb was when partway through the night an Austrian man stood on his face climbing down the ladder.
Given our somewhat fatigued state we began the next day casually and very slowly ambled our way up and down the rather tedious track having lots of breaks to rest and eat snacks. After several hours we reasoned that we were surely within a few kilometers of the hut. This plesant feeling was short lived when finally we managed to get a GPS reading and discovered we were not yet half way and it was almost four. Suddenly we had no option but to walk much faster. Caleb and Rob, after their calamity the previous night, really struggled to keep going. We did make it though. Top Timaru Hut just before nightfall. Eating our dinner after dark we had, in victory, a Billie Holiday dance party using the strobe of our headlights affixed to the ceiling.
It was long and hot and not particularly beautiful, albeit not overly hard, just unceasingly continuous terrain that took us over the Martha Saddle. Atop the saddle we had lunch that day, overlooking the valleys on both sides and the impressive scree encrusted slopes of Mt Martha looming always above.
New Zealanders of a certain generation should recall Blam Blam Blam’s Don’t Fight It, Marsha, It’s Bigger Than Us Both, well sitting here on the saddle of Mt Martha, we found our blog post title for the section. Thinking about it now we probably should have taken a photo of Mt Martha.
The day’s sun was fast fading as the journey out into the nowhere, no plants, no animals, just following a fenceline seemingly arbitrarily towards a road that bemused Rob at the thought that it could possibly lead anyone anywhere given our sense of great isolation. Eventually we found and crossed the road, now heading for a row of pine trees where we assumed we would make our camp for the night. As we approached however the distance between us and the trees increased to reveal a huge river valley of some rather substantive distance. We had found the Ahuriri River, and were atop the edge of huge bank overlooking our stark discovery. We ambled around the barren farmland eventually finding a navigable path down to the riverbank where we made camp for the night.
Crossing the Ahuriri was not too troublesome. After this it was an amble across tussock for hours, then it started raining on us, and then it was hours more of ambling across tussock, siddling ridges, crossing streams back and forth and desperately trying to avoid the spikey plant that lives amidst the tussock. It was during lunch on this day that Caleb stabbed his phone with his waking pole, smashing the screen and rendering the device defunct. Whoops.
We passed many other TA trampers on the way, all of whom had made camp the night before at an ideal spot in beech forest that was ahead of us. There were spots for tents and a ready made fire pit surrounded by logs to sit on and loaded with an ample supply of firewood. Such luxury.
Awake the next day, Lake Ohau in sight, we joyfully bounded down from the forested valley into farmland and inadvertently emerged at the home of a nice old couple, who were not concerned at our apparent confusion in direction, instead offering us tea and biscuits, and a ride to the start of the track on the shores of the lake.
We walked so fast for so long on the lakefront cycleway, seemingly not actually getting any closer to anything. Then we got a ride to Twizel.
Halfway Around the Sun 
sounds like a real adventure.
Reading the blog posts I imagine what it it must have been like for the mothers and friends of our pioneer forebears to get letters by sea from their distant loved ones. Mrs Haast must really have looked forward to the letters from the bottom of the world. Granny Heaphy must have hoped for a pencil drawing to be included with her letter. We get instant gratification and photographic images.
Following your progress with great interest
Colleen and Ian Pryce
Tauranga
agree with Wenderella ..feel like Mrs Haast and Granny Heaphy and the Topp Twins Camp Mother character all rolled together… cooking/ drying and posting food parcels ahead of each stop and hoping we get the timing all right! Our precious young people are taking their loved ones and friends along on a remarkable journey ..and all from the comfort of the good seats. What a privilege.