Te Araroa : Colac Bay to Bluff

KM this section : 80
KM completed : 2997

Baby seal on Oreti Beach.

So, the last leg.  After getting through the last, long section on schedule, I'm no longer pressed for time.  First day out of Colac Bay is just thirteen kilometres, along beach (good to walk by the sea again) and some easy forest track.  With the short distance and little weight on my back, other than a few cans of beer, this doesn't feel like a long distance trail at all.  Fun though, as is another evening relaxing with a big log fire, I could get used to this.

The beach walking continues, Oreti Beach takes me most of the way to Invercargill, and after an initial shingle section I walk on sand, it's very like Ninety Mile Beach four months ago, the trail ends as it began.  Ahead of me, the hilly near-island of Bluff draws ever closer.  First though, Invercargill, a busy port city, seems like a good place to come for sheet metal.  Not so good for beer, supermarkets are not allowed to sell it, and I end up traipsing to an outskirts of town 'super liquor store'.  Because obviously forcing people to drive out and buy booze in bulk is a smart policy...

Homing in on Bluff.

The last day... a nice walk through wetlands along a cycle trail that one day will extend to Bluff.  I have to clamber over a fence at one point to access a weather damaged bridge, seems fine to me, though I wouldn't fancy cycling the embankment on the other side which is under repair.  Then the track ends and I walk the highway for fifteen kilometres or so, not really a problem.  The last hour or two is a circle around Bluff, firstly through bleak and windswept coastal grassland, and then a well built path through scrub.  I find myself slowing, not from fatigue but rather to draw out the moment.  Can it really be about to end?  Well, it is an anticlimax of course, there is not even any TA sign or monument at the end.  I guess this old whaling station, most southerly town in South Island, settled before NZ was a colony, has been a tourist destination long before the TA has existed.

And that's it... I will write a retrospective at some point, maybe when I have a real keyboard.  For now, time for a rest, I'm in pretty good shape but am so looking forward to just not doing much for a few days.  Oh, one more thing - those fifty dollar Warehouse boots?  Still going after some nine hundred kilometres.

Totally made it the whole way, oh yes.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.