Awake in the morning a good half hour before the alarm, and marvel at my acing legs. Then the alarm, but read through it before the painful task of packing everything up, for today is the first of the big drives.
Actually the ache eases off once I start moving, and I'm a bit surprised by another alarm going off at 7.45 here to remind myself that it's my birthday. I'd almost forgotten, out here in the wilds, so many miles from anyone that might have remembered, it barely seems worth noticing. I shall consider desert for supper.
The plan is to drive from FJ to Nelson, a nice little town I stayed in back in 99/2000 (and got up very early in the hope of seeing the first dawn of the new millennium, only pedants say that was in 2001, but it was overcast and drizzling almost all day).
Before that though I take a little trip up in the direction of the glacier, to a walk to the oddly named 'Lake Wombat'. Pleasant little stroll, though two trees have fallen across the path, one can be avoided, the other climbed over. Lake Wombat itself is a bit disappointing the walk ends at a chair from which you can see water through the overhanging branches, but not much of it. There seem to be a pair of ducks. No obvious reason to think of Wombats, and not mentioned in the guide book. It has been drizzling, but my T-shirt is quite unreasonably soaked. If I'm going to carry on with this tramping malarkey I shall have to get a decent wicking shirt or two.
Then back to Franz Josef, and North. It's a long way to Nelson, almost 500km, and here I pass both the 1000 mile mark and later the 2000km barrier. At guess this trip will run to about 3000km.
Splash and dash from the most expensive petrol station yet found before discovering that all the signed petrol stations have cur their prices by 8 cents a litre, which is nice. Picnic lunch north of Hokitika, by a strange little belt drive steam engine, powernap somewhere near Murchison, and finally into Nelson after about 7 hours behind the wheel.
The ghastly place in Christchurch has rather put me off random backpackers (which is silly, the Kaikoura place was really nice) so I'm back in Nelson YHA. Actually quite possibly the same room as all those years ago.
Rather to my surprise Nelson turns out to be a ghost town on a Saturday night in mid October. Whole streets full of cafes not bothering to open in the evening and a few lost souls wandering about looking for salvation, or at least dinner. I wind up in a sports bar showing simultaneous games of Rugby and Netball. The English (or perhaps British) netball team is playing an tour of New Zealand, and naturally is being thrashed by athletic young women in black. Who knew that there even was an English (or perhaps British) netball team? I always thought of it as one of those sports only ever played in schools.
I pass on desert.
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