Day 3. Hukatere

I woke up this morning at 630am, made myself a big bowl of muesli with a cup of coffee and slowly began packing up camp. By 8:00 I was walking. The night was dry, but the sea spray ended up making up for that. My socks and pants that I hung up over night to dry were pretty wet. I decided it's better to keep my other pair of socks dry if my boots were wet anyway, and started the days walk with soggy feet.

The day started with bright sun and a few clouds. I wore my Revelstoke sunhat given to me by Brooke. I ended up losing my mind a bit when my ipod started going haywire, pausing my music around 30 seconds Into each song. I found the only way to get it working was to blow into the head phone jack like an old N64 game, but eventually I gave up and spent the rest of the day listening to water. Not waves, water. Soon after my ipod stopped functioning I felt the wind starting to pick up. It held a cool knife cutting touch to it which told me that there was a storm inbound. I didn't see anything coming my way, but before I knew it the sun was gone and I was ambushed by a storm from both the east and west coast. I quickly put my rain cover on my pack and prepared for the showers. They were mild to start, but I could see an endless anger coming straight for me from the west. It brought heavy wind and rain which did not help with the beach. The tides had turned on me, literally. With the rain from the storm mixed with the rising high tide I was soon jumping into sand dunes to avoid getting swallow by the shore. Ninety mile beach had turned into a sandy wet gauntlet. The wind picked up and I was forced to abandon the beach and take cover in the forest parallel to me. The forest was dark. Every tree was the same, and there wasn't much room to move. I put my pack down and scouted out the situation. Do I set up camp here and wait out the storm? Or do I push to Hukatere Lodge? While watching the trees sway heavily from the wind a fast flash of lighting flew with thunder cracking a few second after. I was in the heart of the storm. It would be a hard day to make it to Hukatere, but I knew I could do it. Anything to avoid camping in this storm. I prepared for the long haul and made haste. I faught the wind and battled the shore as it chased me up the sand dunes. The sand turned soft slowing my steps, but eventually I made it to Hukatere and the light had faded to nothing. My watch clocked 20 miles, 40,000 steps and 3500 calories burned. I felt like a rusty machine that needed a good oil.

After running around the lodge in the rain I eventually found the owner Gabriel. She was a kind, warm hearted German lady who gave me a warm room with hot soup and tea. I was beyond thankful. The lodge also had a hot shower. Looks like the 65+km I had walked in the past 2 days payed off!

I soon found out there were two others staying at the lodge. Dennis was a Canadian from Montreal and Yvette was a Kiwi. They came storming into the main room bursting with energy. They had just finished swimming in the ocean in the middle of the pouring rain. Did I mention they were both 70+. True livers and lovers of life. I helped Gabriel with her new camera and we told stories of our travels. Dennis used to be a professional photographer, telling me of some work he'd done documenting a team in the Artic. Dennis told me how happy he was to find Yvette, his soul mate. Dennis said "when you find your soul mate you can't exactly get ride of them. In the same sense your brother and your soul mate are very similar. No matter what, your brother will always stay your brother because hes your brother. The same applies for your soul mate "

I have a warm lodge to myself and all my clothes are hanging to dry. If the weather's nice tomorrow I'll continue to Ninety Mile beach holiday park. If the storm is still active I will stay at the lodge one more night.