Surprised by the strength of the cocktails last night, we had an early night but I was a little the worse for wear.
Simon discovered that we had to get up even earlier than we had originally planned, as there was a big gap of 90 minutes between the two morning buses. The hotel was charmless and the rooms tiny but functional. We had twin beds, I woke several times in the night but was never awake for long. The curtains weren’t black out, unlike the hotel in Tokyo, and it started to get light at 6 so getting up at 7 wasn’t too hard.
We’d gone for the Western style breakfast option, and it was nice although a salad instead of cereal was a bit strange. We were all packed up and ready by 8:10, so headed off to the train station for the 8:30 bus. There was already a big queue of around 40 people when we arrived, so we began toying with the idea of alternative means of transport. There were no Ubers but there was a taxi stand. The price was quite reasonable, especially split between four of us, although if we’d known there wasn’t a third seat belt in the back we might have had second thoughts.
The driver was lovely and obviously keen to practice his English. The drive to the start of the trail took around 35 minutes. I don’t think we saw anyone from the bus queue for the rest of the day, although they can’t have been that far behind us.
You get given little passports in which you can collect stamps over the course of the trail, but we never bothered with it, which saved time and hassle. The start of the trail is fiercely uphill for a couple of kilometres but settles down a little after that. It was 14 kms in total with around a kilometre of elevation gain and it took us around four hours.
I had my brand new poles to try out. Poles aren’t used much in New Zealand but are much more popular overseas. I’ve had several friends rave about them so I thought I’d give them a try. I think they were helpful, adding a bit of upper body work and spreading the effort from just the legs. If I was cynical I’d say they were a solution looking for a problem but actually overall I’m impressed and will continue to use them over here, especially for the steep bits.
Lunch was a bento box provided by the hotel, and was very Japanese. It wasn’t universally popular amongst our group, and was very rice heavy. I liked it though.
The path was varied, but was very well kept and most of it was through forests. We arrived at our accommodation at around 3 pm. Each couple gets a whole house to ourselves. Our one is very stark and Japanese. This is the bedroom.
Dinner was very early and provided by the hotel, sourced from a local eatery. Surprise surprise, it was another bento box.
Once again we were underwhelmed, so headed out into town for further sustenance, and with the help of google found one place that was open in the little hamlet. They had a limited selection but a couple of cheese plates and some bruschetta was all we needed, along with liquid refreshments. Initially the only table spare was one near the floor, that required us to sit at ground level, but luckily some people left just then, which meant we could sit at a table which was kinder on the knees.
A thunderstorm broke just as we were finishing and we stumbled home through the rain and lightening, sharing a couple of umbrellas between us. We’d toyed with the idea of waiting out the storm but luckily we didn’t because not long after we got back to the Happiness hotel, it started to hail really heavily.
A big day tomorrow, I hope the rain stops soon.