By Ruth
Distance: 23 km
Last night we had another mouse encounter. This time, they didn’t just make threatening noises. Elliot was awake in the night with the sounds of mice rustling around his backpack. In the morning as we battled aggressive sandflies over breakfast, we discovered the mouse had chewed through his pack liner, his food bag, and two plastic bags to reach the prize: a dried fruit and nut bar. More upsetting than the loss of the fruit bar was the destruction wrought on the gear along the way.
After this disheartening start to the day, we began walking and things pretty quickly began to improve. It was a bit overcast but the wind had died down, leading to ideal walking conditions. The scenery was cool too: dry and desert-like.
As we walked upstream, Lake Ohau eventually came into view, and we started getting a bit antsy to be done the section. At different points on this section Elliot and I both had the thought of “I want to go home”. It wasn’t the walking that was the tough part – we mostly loved the scenery and traversing mountain terrain. But the cold and mouse-filled nights left us wondering what we were doing it for.
Once we reached the road, we were planning to hitch into Twizel, the nearest small town. The road was empty though, with barely any cars passing. As we stood at the side of the road, the sandflies decided to join us in force. We decided to walk in the direction of a hostel about 3.5 km away in the opposite direction, and try to hitch en route. (The sandflies don’t attack you when you’re moving). Eventually we managed to get a ride to the highway intersection where there would be a lot more cars heading into town. Even though I had to sit in the trunk with the dogs, we were very grateful for the lift. From there it wasn’t long before we were in town.
Accommodation options in Twizel are very limited. We landed a room at a third-rate, overpriced hotel, but we were glad just to be sleeping inside. We will need at least a couple rest days here to recover physically (I have a foot tendinitis flare-up after our long day yesterday) and mentally, but the lack of comfortable places to stay is making that look difficult to get. For now we will get a good night’s rest and hopefully things will be clearer in the morning.