Day 6 - Havelock - Rest Day

I was hoping to sleep in today but was wide awake by 8am. I had a rest day today, but I still had lots to do. I started my day by going to a local cafe, ordering a flat white, a egg and bacon pie, and figuring out what my plan of attack was for the Richmond range. The Te Araroa website had the track labeled as red with alerts so I knew I needed to call the Nelson DOC office and figure out what  the shape of the track was, and what sort of weather was expected.

Kat and I decided we're going to hike together for the next 3 days before she breaks off and walks into Nelson, and I'll continue on into the range. This will be the end of the Te Araroa for her and also her completion of the south island. So we called the DOC office in Nelson together to make sure we got all our information sorted clearly. The range was open to my relief, but there was rain forecasted for a few days ahead of us. The good thing is most of the stream crossings I have to do in the range are on the back half and hopefully the rain will have past by them.

After I got the go ahead from DOC to take on the range, Kat helped me outline my route and figure out exactly what sort of food I was going to need. We then hit up the local 4 square and I spent some heavy cash. It cost me about 200 NZD for the 10 days of food I needed, and another 150NZD for the 8 days of food I'd be shipping ahead of myself and picking up in the small village of St Arnaud for the section after the range.

After food planning and postage was taken care of I did a load of laundry and sulked around in my rain pants and down jacket waiting for everything to dry. I finally had a bit of time to relax, and took it to call my sunshine back home. She always makes my day a bit brighter.

Tomorrow Kat and I will head to Pelorous Bridge. Half the day is road walking and the other half is through farm land and along side the Pelorous River. I'm definitely going to feel it with the extra 10 days of food on my back.