We awoke to gentle rain. Oh well. The jackets and the pack covers came out and we said goodbye to Pororari at 8:35am. But the rain had already turned to mist and our jackets swiftly went back into our packs again.
Today is a nice gentle day to finish the trip. Five hours of gradual downhill through goblin forest and beech forest. Handy signs pointed out the places where successive cyclones had flattened the forest and others highlighted the Ongaonga (nettle) to avoid.
We met a steady stream of daytrippers on bikes and on foot coming the other way. Popping up to Pororari and back in a day would be a great trip if you were down Punakaiki way.
Soon we met the junction where bikers go one way and walkers the other - heralded by our first set of steps in four days. We joined the Pororari River Track for the last half an hour or so. It was both encouraging and disconcerting now to be sharing the track with families and jandals - it certainly showed that we were nearly done!
And there at last the gates that marked the end of the track loomed in front of us. We gratefully and wearily dropped our packs and took the obligatory photos.
Now it was down to business. While Janine sorted collecting her the car keys, we wandered about the Punakaiki camping ground searching for the car. It was quite the mission! But we found it in the end, with some dubious directions, at the very back of the camping ground by the sand dunes. Judicious use of baby wipes freshened us up instead of paying the going rate of EIGHT DOLLARS EACH for a campground shower.
We loaded up and headed direct to the Old Slaughterhouse Lodge, most of the way to Karamea, with just a short stop at Westport New World for our food for the next few days. We went big on bbq meat and eggs, and very, very light on anything dehydrated.
It was quite bewildering when we got there (but everything became clear after not too long). We overshot the entrance and had to u-turn and come back. Initially Paulie who lives in the house at the bottom of the hill met us; he wasn't too sure what was going on either. But Suzanne our co-host turned up pretty quickly and sorted us out.
We were planning on sorting our lives out at leisure at the lodge itself which was a shame for Paulie and Suzanne. That meant that our tramping packs, and our day bags, and our (in retrospect) well over catered supermarket shopping all had to go onto the front and back racks of two ATVs. I think we may have posed a problem here! But in short order, with crates and rope and moving things about for front/rear balance, they got it sorted. (Next time we'd sort our gear out in the car park and bring only what we needed up with us).
So with Suzanne and Paulie riding up with our stuff, we trudged up the hill. It was fairly steep and seemed never ending - partly because we didn't really know where we were going, partly because we'd just come off the hiking and were ready to not hike anymore. Future trips up and down seemed easy and quick so I think it was our fatigue and confusion as much as anything else.
Once we were there, we were in paradise. A main building and three separated bedroom blocks, with stunning views out over the beach and into the Tasman. Our hosts, David, Suzanne, two black cats and a dog. A stream providing all our water and running a turbine for all our electricity.
The four of us were sharing the lodge with two other couples - one couple who kept to themselves mostly, and another older English couple we got to know over the next few days.
We retired to our rooms and sorted through all our gear - separating tramping gear from stuff to reuse, sorting out washing bags and leftover food to continue eating. I thought we had lots left over but except for three mostly uneaten blocks of chocolate I think we did okay actually.
Fired up the barbecue and had all manner of meats as well as vegetarian friendly capsicums and eggplant and courgette and the like. Yum! But we all faded very quickly and were in bed and sleeping very early.
