Zero day in Twizel

Neither more nor less than our regular food marathon and me agonising over my ever-expanding corpus in the half-length hostel room mirror. Didn’t stop me from eating a whole brownie though. Also, Toby discovered Tom & Luke’s raw balls, which will probably make up the entirety of his food weight for this next stretch. At this stage I was starting to tire of trail food, and opted for couscous, tuna packets and taco spice for every dinner. There were two packets of hot chocolate and coffee respectively in our hotel room, and I threw those in my food bag for good measure. I wasn’t a coffee addict back then (unlike now, post-MA), and figured I probably wouldn’t end up drinking them. Hah.

Twizel was pretty sleepy, not much to do other than rummage through the small local bookstore and enjoy Facebook while there was still WiFi to be had. I thought about the trail ahead. Unlike these past few days which had felt like coming home to a longed-for collection of memories, this next stretch would be a true adventure – I’d never been to that part of New Zealand before. I vaguely remembered Wanaka, the next town we would hit in a few days, as a small but lively town. But the wild mountains between here and there were utterly unknown to me. There would be some big days and big skies, and the biggest non-hazard zone river crossing – the Ahuriri river. The town stays and resupply prep had become routine now, but it was still exciting to begin something sort of new. I was marginally tired of the act of walking, and so downloaded some episodes of my favourite podcast: the Savage Lovecast. If that won’t entertain you through a thousand miles, nothing will.