By Elliot

Distance: 12km

I didn’t sleep well last night. I’d read recent comments about the spot we’d stayed at, and someone had mentioned some kind of rodent chewing through his tent and food bag, as well as eating half his food. We don’t keep food inside the tent, so we were safe on that front. But we store our food in our backpacks. What was to stop the mouse/rat from chewing a hole in our bags to get to our food?

I knew the rodent had arrived when I heard soft scratching around the tent. I opened my eyes and looked outside, but saw nothing. Then I looked up, and there was the mouse, a shadow moving over top of the tent. If the mouse decided to chew through our packs, there wasn’t much I could do to stop them, so in theory there was no reason to stay awake and alert the entire night. In practice, I slept fitfully and was hyper aware of all the noises outside the tent.

Luckily, when we woke up this morning, our bags and food were intact, except for a tiny nibble on the inside of Ruth’s bag.

It wasn’t raining this morning, which was much appreciated. Given the short day we had ahead of us, we waited for the sun to hit our campsite and put our clothes on the drying line.

Eventually, we started moving, and luckily our shoes didn’t get any wetter than they were already, not for lack of trying by the trail.

We had some uphills today that were really slow, as the track we were on was wet clay, and so extremely slippery.

After just over an hour and a half, we were on roads, and cruised the last 7kms into camp. Meanwhile, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe loomed over us and seemed to get closer with every step.