Ahuriri River back to Hawea with a buddy

Have been back to the 5 th wheel parked at our friends, the Ward family , beekeepers based in Hawea. Have enjoyed very much time with this family and was reluctant to relocate the 5 th north too quickly , so elected to do the next section in reverse . From NOBO I changed to SOBO for the three days . Also a Northland friend of ours , Beth Masser has been in the south adventuring with a few big walks . I invited her to join me on this section and she was keen to see this area to tick it off her impressive list of “palmares”

Not having walked with a buddy on the first sections this walk was a novelty with shared laughs and an enjoyable walk too . Hard for Beth as I’m getting a little hearing impaired so she had to repeat herself often in our rambling dialogue.

Day one tackled the Martha saddle , nothing too arduous but at about 26 km still a full day till arriving at Top Timaru Hut

Day 2 was totally fun , a long walk down the Timaru river , rock hoping , constantly crossing and recrossing the river . Just a fun day before a 1.5 hour cruelly steep climb up to an ancient shepherds hut called Stody’s Hut . A wet feet day .

Day 3 was a pleasant amble in the tussock zone before ascending Breast Hill , the high point of the trip 1578m . From here the views down to Hawea and surrounds are amazing .

The walk down to the lake was really steep and slow going and the day heated up . Took us a little under 7 hours to get to the lake where we both took a well earned swim to cool down the engines. Peter in his usual incredible kindness came and picked us up and ferried us to our respective abodes .

Great walk with Beth where nutrition was a frequent topic of conversation. We are both on the same page on one very important point . “ Nutrition should focus on eating natural whole foods , avoiding the processed crap that lines our supermarkets “

However Beth is biased towards plants and fibre where I see animal sourced foods as paramount .

The differences seem to speak for themselves 😉😂

Now relocating the 5th wheel North to Lake Coleridge , which is my base while I walk the sections up from Tekapo

3 comments

  1. I think what we can take from this is that those on plant based diets are more likely to spell their first names correctly?! Nice blog. The adventure continutes……

    • Thanks Sylvia for all your comments . It’s been a lot of fun eh and still more to come . Looking forward to the Nelson lakes section in a couple of weeks or so . When did you do the walk ?

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