Early morning runners past the gate brought the two little dogs, Ruby and Chico, yapping down from the house. Happily once they'd ever so vocally seen the runners off they--Ruby especially--were happy to quietly contort themselves into odd shapes if you scratched them in just the right spot.
Another friend I made at Miner's Camp was a bold little fantail who quickly learned that if he came and twittered at me on the way to the loo, when I was done I would prop the door open for him while I washed my hands at the adjacent sink. This was his opportunity to swoop in and feast on the numerous little black flies that had collected in the cubicle. I listened to the tap-tap--tap I his beak on the wall while I brushed my teeth, happy in the knowledge that each yap was another fly meeting it's doom, without even a squashed body to show for it! On first opening the day before the number of flies in the cubicle had been extremely off-putting for human would-be users of the loo, but by the time I left this morning my fantail friend and I had managed to reduce this down to a much less disgust-inducing half dozen or so. Huzzah for interspecies cooperation!
Wishing Liz all the best for the rest of her time in NZ I finally set off around 9:25. Much of the morning proved to be an easy walk, sidling along around the inlet about twenty metres above the waterline. The early morning sunshine was becoming intermittent so on reaching a junction with the track to Camp Bay I stopped for a very early lunch to make the most of the last of the sunshine to try and dry my tent. A runner came past and told me off for covering the DOC signs, but I assured her I would remove fly etc from where they hung should anyone else happen along. No one did until I was already making moves to leave and the signs had already been relieved of clothesline duty.
From the junction the track climbs to the top of the ridge, and stays up there until descending back to water level near the end of the QCT. Consequently all salubrious accommodation options must be reached by diverting off the main track and down into various bays. Happily I'm doing the TA and require nothing more than a basic DOC campsite (not even that really) of which there are three on the QCT itself.
At the Kenepuru Saddle (accessible by road) I found Sven having a break and chatting to the French guy, who after spending the night in their car had still not managed to find his hiking companion and was resolved to wait at the car until he showed up. Poor sod. There are definite pluses to hiking solo--the only one who can get lost is yourself!
I joined them for a short break before Sven and I set off together, bound for the Bay of Many Coves Campsite. The trail from the saddle was a bit more challenging, with more ups and downs, and also crosses private land so rather than forest much of the track is scrubby or bordered by pine trees. We passed several walkers coming the other way, including one lady being given a lift on an ATV. She looked at me slightly concerned as she past, just as Sveb and I had laboured to the top of a small hill. I told her not to worry and that the sweat, which was streaming down my face, was a permanent feature. Glamourous hiker I am not, but for my part I was privately pleased that although I was sweating I wasn't breathing particularly hard. Must be getting fitter!
Sven snd I stopped for an unintentionally long break at a picnic table blessed with both a view and a nearby loo. We'd already been stopped a while when two of the people passing us caught sight of my maps and one said "you look like TAers!". In a few minutes we'd introduced ourselves to Katie, a Kiwi from Auckland, and Flo, a crazy-fit German guy--NoBo's one day away from finishing their TA adventure. They had left a lot of their gear at the hostel to do the QCT, and seem to have been semi-ultra lighting anyway, so merely had day packs and were difficult to pick as TAers--with the exception if the fact that they were young, fit and doing the QCT in half the time it takes most other people. Katie seemed keen to get on but Flo was a chatty guy, keen to share lots of advice for what lay ahead for me in the South Island. He found it all very straight forward so I wasn't sure how beneficial his advice might be to someone like me, who will likely find several sections something if a challenge!
Eventually we each went our opposite ways, them North and Sven and I South. I was feeling a little bad as I inadvertently put an emphasis on "I" when I said "I am" in response to Flo's question "Are you guys doing the TA?". From his reaction Sven hadn't missed this slip, but I swear it was from an innate desire for accuracy rather than any wish to be a trail snob, but I suppose if misinterpreted it amounts to the same thing. Oh dear. I tried to redeem my snobby ways by later commenting that although Sven wasn't doing TA he sounded as though he'd walked most of it already as multiple short trips.
We got to Bay of Coves Campdite just before 4pm. I was completely out of water and dehydrated and so made topping up water from the rain tank my first priority. As I cracked two Aquatabs into the bottle to let it treat for the required half hour a couple of white specks caught my eye. The water itself was a little yellow in colour and the white specks in my bottle were moving...not just moving, swimming, darting about. As I looked closer it turned out I had bottled my own little aqua zoo. As someone who was incredibly thirsty I was unimpressed and sat watching, waiting for the things to die as half an hour slowly ticked by. In the meantime Sven and I chatted and snacked. I ate the last if the fruit and shard some brownie with Sven. Unfortunately half an hour passed and one or two of the little organisms were still alive. Unable to wait any longer I fished out my Lifestraw from my pack (something I chucked in on a whim while I was home at Christmas) and put it through it's first use. It seemed to work surprisingly well and in a minute I'd slurped down over a litre. Sven, minus a Lifestraw, contented himself with drinking from his treated bottle. His zoo hadn't seemed to be as populous as mine.
At 4:45 we set off again, knowing we were pushing it slightly to get to Black Rock Campsite before it started getting dark, but Bay of Coves wasn't the most inviting campsite in the world. As Sven signed the book, for us both it turned out, I couldn't help hoping the water at Black Rock would be better.
The next climb along the track wasn't as bad as I had expected and was over before I knew it (being hydrated again probably helped). The track then sidles along the ridge for a bit before descending gently to a but if a saddle and then climbing gently back up to Black Rock. There are lovely views of the sounds on either side along the way.
We made it to camp at around 7:20. Sven pitched his wet tent in one of the designated tent spots, while I--seeing as we were the only people there--erected mine inside the roofed shelter. Being freestanding my tent doesn't need to be pegged out to stand up, and I figured there was no point in getting a wet tent again if I didn't have to. Plus the shelter buffered the brisk breeze, and had a wonderful view right up the sound to Picton. Sven and I made dinner at a picnic table and then shifted to the shelter to sit and watch the light fade and the twinkling lights of Picton and Shakespeare Bay begin to glow in the dusk. A cruise ship must have come in to dock sometime that afternoon, and every hour or two a ferry came or went. It was a beautiful slowly changing scene and we both attempted to take photos, Sven's SLR doing a much better job of it than my beloved point-and-shoot. We talked about Tolkien's Middle Earth (turns out Sven is also a fan) as it once again grew dark, and eventually we each went off to bed. A weka was foraging around most of the evening and as I was just getting to sleep a possum cackled nearby. I growled back, hoping that would be enough to keep it at bay, if not for the night then at least a little while as I got to sleep!
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