Hitchhiking back to the trail and starting fresh on the trail. We managed it to get to Kiwi Hut where we were alone again. Are there no people around anymore?
We got a ride back to the trail after standing at the road for about 40min. A guy from Greymouth took us to the footbridge so we didn’t need to cross the Otira River. We thought it is probably our best bet to take the footbridge instead of crossing the river because of the heavy rain yesterday.
In the trail notes it said it is supposed to take 2 hours from the footbridge until the valley. When we crossed the footbridge, the DOC sign indeed said 4 hours. That is quite a difference!
The next trail section turned out to be really difficult. The trail was often washed away and covered by trees that you had to climb over. It took us about 3.5 hours to get to the valley. Crossing the river here would have probably been a lot faster.
From now on a good 4×4 track led into the valley. We found a nice swimming pool and Timo jumped into it!
The 4×4 track disappeared after a while but it was easy to walk in the river bed nevertheless. Only at some spots we had to search for the trail.
There were a lot of neat camping spots in the valley. As the sandflies were a real pain, we decided not to camp but to carry on until Kiwi Hut.
To get there, we had to cross a big river to get to the other side of the valley.
When we got to the hut, there was no one around. That is actually the first day in awhile that we didn’t meet anyone on the trail. We didn’t mind to have the hut for ourselves though ?
