Pakituhi Hut - Lake Hawea Village

Never had I known such exhaustion. It penetrated every cell of my body. It wasn’t even my own alarm that woke me, but the alarm of the Spanish couple sleeping in the top bunks. I forced open a slit of my right eye and peered out the window. Grey. The faint sound of drizzle. Hell no. I closed my eyes again. Heard Toby stir on my right. Patrick lay still like a corpse on my left, his head barely poking out of his sleeping bag. Lord in heaven. For all our rest days, big miles still had the power to wipe me out completely. I felt so heavy. Body like lead, stiff as a post, head full of cotton. All we had to do today was get off this mountain and trudge a short stretch of road into Lake Hawea campground. I guess more sporty people could have made it all the way to Wanaka in one day. But just getting out of bed was more effort than I could currently muster. I needed a good old weekend. Thank goodness we weren’t in a rush. We sat huddled in our sleeping bags, massive rings under our eyes, waiting for the rain to abate before pulling on our socks, tying our shoelaces for the 8000th time and left Pakituhi Hut behind.

The descent from Breast Hill was excruciating. Lake Hawea and the village in the bay down below were hidden behind a veil of thick mist that obscured everything but the immediate trail from view. It twisted hideously steeply down between outcrops of jagged rock, somehow managing to climb again through wet grass and heavy sand. I hadn’t seen the likes of this eerie weather since our crazy day on Mount Rintoul in the Richmond Ranges. This time we weren’t in any grave danger, as it was only a few sloppy kilometres down to the road and salvation. I had a vague perception that the fog would make for some cool pictures, and half-heartedly asked Toby for a couple of shots to put on my blog I would eventually create (YEY, here we are!). But in reality it was a real trudge. I shook my head in disbelief at the guy we met who was going up, it must have been the most heinous climb ever. The humidity inside my raincoat was stifling. I was steamed like a vegetable until I finally gave up and strapped the jacket to my pack and opted to get wet instead. Gradually the tussock gave way to green ferns, the wriggly path became sweeping switchbacks, and we abruptly came to the road.

Again, no hitchhike intended. I hadn’t even stuck out my thumb. But we must have looked so ragged and forlorn that the massive campervan driving by braked violently all the same and came reversing back to us.

“Y’all want a ride!” hollered the dreadlocked woman inside.

Patrick looked so sceptical that for a moment I wondered if he would refuse of out puritan principle, but the woman and her boyfriend had already opened the back door. They were from Virginia, they shouted back as we squeezed through the narrow kitchen and sat down on the side couches, no seatbelts. I was normally the one to make eager conversation, but I felt half a sleep as we tumbled about on the bumpy gravel road for the 10-ish minutes it took for our freethinking drivers to cruise into Lake Hawea. Patrick still seemed a little buffed that we were getting lazy about the road stretches. Looking back, I also wished we had taken fewer rides on these transport stretches of gravel road between the trailheads, but there and then it just seemed like unnecessary work. It wasn’t like we weren’t getting in enough walking. Walking was all we did, aside from eating like crap and sleeping like crap. I really admire purist thru-hikers who don’t miss a single inch of trail. I guess I am too inherently lazy (or shall we say flexible) to adopt such a rigid mindset.

All I wanted was to sit down. Sitting down seemed like the most civilised thing in the world. I just didn’t want to goddamn walk anymore. The three of us sank down at the local café amidst postcard stands and shelves of candy bars and cup noodles. We mechanically chewed through burgers and fries in complete paralysis before dragging our feet to the local campground. One shower, a call with my mother and a fresh t-shirt later, the sun had burned through all the clouds, and the day seemed much brighter. We were spending money like wildfire, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I walked down to the lakeshore to enjoy the view while a lazy bumblebee buzzed around me. Breast Hill and other windswept mountains crowned the lake in perfect splendour, and I could only marvel at this country where every place was more beautiful than the next.

I’d gotten used to not having anything to do for long hours in town. The campground was a ten-minute walk from the cluster of houses that constituted Lake Hawea village. Toby was beginning to feel the wallet burn and stuck to his noodles & tuna packets. Patrick and I on the other hand, craved pizza like a pack of hyenas, and trotted in our flip flops back to the store. We talked about Etienne – we still missed him and his hilarious misfortunes – and how the trail had come to be for the two of them. The golden sunset bathed us and our warm pizza boxes as we dreamily ate a couple of slices and walked back along the breezy shoreline. Patrick was such a quiet guy, but I admired his resolve – which I felt was stronger than mine at times even though the Te Araroa was a more existential quest for me. Patrick didn’t cheat at stuff. He worked hard, head down, and never complained. He was the kind of guy who would come into the office with a cold instead of staying at home with Netflix. Two years my junior, he had the mindset of someone more diligent and responsible than me, and I felt a pang of both respect and envy. The three of us were such an unlikely grouping. But that’s what the trail does in the end: bringing together people from all walks of life on the walk of a lifetime.

Tomorrow we were bound for Wanaka. I was incredibly excited to revisit the gorgeous lakeside town. I’d popped by both in 2010 and 2015, and every time it was buzzing with activity, a tourist hub on the gateway between Otago and the West Coast. Arriving in Wanaka would be arriving somewhere, not just dropping by an outcrop of civilisation. There would be proper shops, restaurants, other people. We gobbled down our carbs and settled in for the night as the sunset crept down over the Breast Hill crest and turned the world orange.