Camp Stream Hut – Lake Tekapo Village

What a morning! Again! On this momentous day we would reach the halfway point of the Te Araroa. We couldn’t have been more eager to get going, but the sunrise was too beautiful to miss. The three of us sat in our puffy jackets drinking strawberry tea and eating brown sugar oatmeal. My belongings lay scattered across the flat grass outside my tent, ready to be packed up and logged this last stretch in Canterbury before we entered Otago. This day marked true progress. And this stretch had been the most beautiful of rewards, I was completely in love with the golden landscape and endless skies. Now we were ready for a blazing finish across 30 km of sky-walking, the last 10 of which were on the gravel road lining Lake Tekapo’s shores.

Once across that morning’s river and up a small hill, we were in it to win it. The call of town beckoned, and we had never been in such a fantastically easy home stretch. We pummelled ourselves over the scorched earth at record pace. The landscape was wide open, like we were walking on the roof of the world. We crossed an actual paved road and saw the snowy Southern Alps crystal clear in the crisp morning air. How could the ground be this flat in the mountains? It was like we were perched on a plateau high up above everything, as if the ground was only there to support us while we walked into the blue. The sky was everywhere. Not high up above, it began at our feet.

Coming over the last ridge, the sight of Lake Tekapo glistening hit us with almost the same force as the wind. All our trucker hats flew off our heads and were only narrowly rescued. My feet had swelled with heat and effort, and I couldn’t get down to the road fast enough. The sun roasted us as always. Nature was so wild and gorgeous and harsh all at once. With hair whipping across my face, I thundered down, Toby and Patrick trailing right behind me. Once on the road, the wind disappeared and was replaced by microwave-like heat. We hadn’t intended to hitchhike. It was pure habit that made me stick out my thumb at the large white pickup speeding by us in a cloud of dust. Its driver seemed hesitant when he saw the state of us, but I wooed him into throwing our packs in the back and cramming us all inside. He stubbornly refused to believe that we were on a 1400 walk, but drove us speedily into Tekapo Village and food heaven.

We sank down in the airconditioned town bakery. How civilised it felt, sitting on an actual chair and not just on our butts on the ground. A shocked-looking Asian family fled their table next to us and our dirty packs. Raspberry muffin: YES. Cheesecake: YES. Ice tea: YES. Never mind second breakfast, I was down for a fifth dessert! Not that I needed a celebratory cause to justify extreme sugar-consumption, but this was the halfway point after all. Stuffed and happy we loaded plastic bags full of our favourite groceries at the Four Square supermarket and walked in the baking afternoon heat over our bunk room at the campsite. My my, we were in for a bit of fancy living! Our room was pleasantly airy in a red wooden house, with a sliding door leading right to a small porch and lawn. The beach lay just down the driveway, and we sprinted down with our towels (lol, my towel and Toby’s dishcloth) flying out behind us.

-          Last person in is a sucker!

We screamed and threw ourselves in the ice blue waters. How great was this life! We surfed on the waves, I floated on my back and let the mountain view swallow me whole. Straight ahead I could see the Two Thumb Range we’d just crossed, and behind that was 750 km of mountains. Behind me, going south, we only had to reach Twizel before embarking on another equally mountainous 700 km. But the concepts of time and distance didn’t really matter in this sunshiny moment of pure joy and contentment. Of course I could walk 750 kilometres, I already had. I was high on sugar and accomplishment, and only rolled over to splash Toby and otter-wriggle back to the shore.

Tekapo Village was so lovely and vibrant. I felt more like a tourist than ever, having been here twice before. I picked up my box containing all my future resupplies at the tourist office. Inside were my Tekapo resupplies – just contact lenses and a new book – and two small boxes with miscellaneous items and snacks meant for Wanaka and Queenstown. Beyond that there was nothing. I had reached the end of my own plans here. Everything I’d meticulously prepped in my hostel room at the Wellington YHA was between my fingers to send one last time. It felt oddly nostalgic. The Te Araroa had always been my end goal. There weren’t a dozen other thru-hikes lined up for me when I returned to Norway. It didn’t strike me as hard in that post office in Tekapo as it does now that I’m writing this exactly three years later, but I hadn’t really made any life plans beyond the trail. A Master’s degree had always been in the cards, preferably at some prestigious university in the UK. And after that, who knew? But these thoughts must have only drifted across my mind at the time, as I paid for postage and an oreo brownie from the till.

Tomorrow would be an exceptional day on the trail, as we wouldn’t be walking to get to Twizel. Patrick had booked bikes for us from Alps2Ocean, so we could tick off 60 km of waterless gravel road in one day. Walking that stretch seemed hellish, and the bike option seemed to be the standard way to go. Dirty secret: I learned to bike really late (we’re talking 10 years old), and I’d never been a particularly confident biker on uneven terrain, in traffic etc. So when a guy named Wayne dropped off three bikes for us, I opted for the one with saddle bags instead of a mini tow-trailer. Testing out my silver and blue companion felt so strange, I hadn’t biked for probably seven years at that point. But hell to the yes - I would ace it tomorrow! Act confident and no one will question you, as they say.