te anau
She has made it to Te Anau but not without "incident" Yesterday was a series of "challenges". It was pissing down all day and she was soaked head to toe despite her protective wet weather gear. Her expensive hiking boots had been abandoned near the beginning of the track as they gave her blisters the size of 50 cent pieces (the gigantic old ones) so she has left them in a salvation army shop where a child (she has tiny deer like feet) will get the surprise of a lifetime. She bought sandals and they fell apart on their first river crossing and then mud up to her knees.
Following directions in the guide book she lost the path and ended up clinging to the side of cliff, then, while traversing a waterfall she fell, grabbing at what appeared to be a tree which came away, from the hill, roots and all. Her last thought as she was about to fall was 'Oh shit! '.........
Miraculously she landed on her feet. She got back to the trail and just kept slogging. She made it to the Hut, and all she said she thought was, 'I am grateful, I am grateful for life.'Out of the wilderness for a few days she is in Te Anau and down to one pair of shoes and one dry pair of socks and hopefully is camping in the yard of some very nice people who are friends of the equally nice people she stayed with in Invercargill.
She's met few people on the track, she is of course walking in the opposite direction to most of them, and at the moment she is meeting many people as they near the end of their grueling journey and so they don't talk much. She has, of course, already completed part of central North Island part. Yesterday, at festival of the elements in Porirua (probably at the same time my daughter almost died) someone said to me,'Your daughter is amazing.' My response was, 'I can't take credit for that, she came out that way.'