Day 37: Heaphy Hut to Saxon Hut (36 km!)

Not as many pictures today.  It was a long hike (TOO LONG!) and it was a bunch of stuff we saw the day before.

The sandflies were just as bad, and the rain only let up in spurts, but we managed 36 km (around 22 miles) this day, uphill, to make it to Saxon Hut.  Which was filled with teenagers, as part of a school trip.  One group from Golden Bay and one from the Karamea area.  Every couple of years they hike across the Heaphy, and meet at Saxon.  They were surprisingly well behaved, and the slight chaos they caused (they are teenagers, afterall) gave us cover to hang out in the hut for a while, warm up, and cook dinner.  Which was nice, we needed a break from the rain and bugs.

After we got mostly dry, we curled up in our tents, knowing that even worse weather was coming.

  

 I don't know what blew this tree over, but it was a massive wind of some sort.

 Splintered it pretty good.  It was probably 6 or 7 feet across.