23km Day : 548km Total
15 January 2015
-41.20274, 174.031773

Today I left camp a little before 8am.  I had only a minimal breakfast (granola bar) before leaving with the idea of stopping around 10am to brew up some oatmeal and coffee.  For those first couple of hours the track was mostly uphill and I struggled to keep a good pace.  Attributing this to my reduced hiking fitness from the 6 week break I took.

As I got ready to make oatmeal I realized my spork was inside a sack inside a sack (repeated phrase intended) near the bottom of my backpack and I wasn’t in the mood to completely empty my pack to get at it.  Especially since there were a lot of other people around to witness such foolishness.  So to avoid eating oatmeal with my fingers I opted for an OSM Bar and a granola bar, washed down with 2 cups of instant coffee sweetened with sugar packets “acquired” from a cafe in Wellington.  The modified breakfast with the extra coffee did the trick, because for the rest of the day I was able to keep a good pace. Lunch was salami and cheese on pita bread.  Dinner was salami on pita (the cheese was starting to smell ripe), two packets of ramen noodles and hand full of nuts and raisins.

I saw heaps of other trampers on the trail today.  All of them were day-hikers staying at lodges at nights between sections of the trail and having all of their luggage transported by boat from lodge to lodge.

As a side amusement I’ve been counting Wekas as I hike.  Two seen yesterday and eleven seen today.  Two of them are probing around my tent as I type this, to see if I left anything edible in reach.  The current Weka count is 13.