Woke up before the alarm, had a leisurely breakfast, then headed down to the station early, hoping to find a wifi signal where I could check my email without using cell phone data, but was disappointed no one had a free wifi anywhere. Evidently they have a purveyor here called Spark, where you buy a reloadable sim card for $5, though it starts out with $20 of wifi time on it, and it lets you onto any Spark wifi system, which is in a little cage next to the service station, and also at most of the other buildings in town. Not having time to mess with it, we decided to forget about it for the moment. Hubby suddenly couldn't find his back brace, which he usually wears for any of our longer rides, and we searched high and low for it with no success. He was convinced he had taken in out of the suitcase last night and put it with his clothes, but we looked everywhre for it with no luck. We can only think he must have knocked it off the bed during the night on his way to the bathroom, and then it fell into the door step of the van and got kicked out in the morning with no one noticing. A long shot, but we couldn't find any other explanation. Anyway, our ride leader showed up, a true Maori Kiwi, a young man of 22, whose father owned the business of Horse M Treks. Our original schedule was for the Fishers Track ride, which was advertised as bing 21 kilometers (12 miles), and 4-5 hours long with experienced riders, 6-7 hours long with novices. Jakob said the ride was really more like 27 kilometers long, which we really thought would really be too much for Hubby, especially without a back brace. After much discussion and suggestions, we agreed to take Jakob up on his offer of an alternative route which would be a bit shorter, around a different part of the forest, though he assured us we wouldn't be disappointed. Another factor was the weather, it had started drizzling last night, and was forecast to continue doing that all day, and the original route would take us up some altitude where it was bound to get much colder and wetter in the clouds. We were NOT disappointed! In fact, the entire ride was fantastic! After getting introduced to our pretty spirited horses, with Hubby on a paint named Memphis, would you believe, and me on a part Arab buckskin named Duffy, we pulled out of the driveway and up the road, following the railroad tracks a short way before crossing the road. We briefly went through a neighborhood before reaching the entrance of the wilderness area, following a gravel road for maybe a mile before crossing a bridge over a raging river, and maybe a mile or so more up the gravel road to a beautiful lookout and beyond, until we finally got off the road and into some pretty high grass like stuff, and finally into the woods, which were some of the darkest, spookiest woods ever! So cool! There was even a section Jakob called the Blair Witch section, where they used to pull practical jokes on some of the tourist, skeletons on strings and so forth. Even though it rained off and on, it seemed appropriate because it had a real rain forest feel to it. After a couple hours on the trail, Jakob led us to a spectacular spot for lunch, with a view of a stunning waterfall that apparently very few people have ever seen. It didn't even have a name, it was so remote. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch that Jakob brought for us, and chatted like old friends for well on a half hour, before mounting up and heading out again. Jakob did a fabulous job of catering to our every need, and we even did some incredible long canters unlike anything we've ever done before on a rented ride. We had one river crossing where the horses practically had to swim across (well, now quite, but it was definitely a boot-wetting experience, even though I put my legs way up!) Hubby's boots got a bit submerged since he can't lift his legs that high, I managed to keep one foot dry while the other got wet. Jakob offered to take us to a spot where we could actually swim the horses, and if it had been a hot day we would have jumped at the chance, but it wasn't that warm out, and we were already pretty wet, so we declined. We had another fantastic canter for a long way up the road, with Jakob staying behind us because his horse had a missing shoe and he didn't want to lame him on the gravel, but he gave us leave to canter as far as we wanted, just stop to let him catch up before we got back into town! Well, that was a great canter! Before we knew it, we were back to the railroad tracks and into Jakob's yard. He invited us for venison stew, which we would have loved to stay for, but we are on a pretty tight schedule, and the ride was about 5 hours long, we arrived back at 4:00. Since we still had a drive ahead of us, we had to decline, but I shared my GPS map with him (at least, it's in the email waiting to go out as soon as I can get a wifi signal again!), discovering the ride was just about 12 miles anyway, just perfect. And amazingly, Hubby's back didn't bother him a bit, despite the long ride! Guess we didn't need his back brace after all! We considered going back to the campground to look for it, but decided it wasn't worth the time on such a longshot, so we headed back to the park station, got a little fuel for the campervan, and headed south to another DOC campground I had found about 1 ½ hours down the road, which would leave only about a 2 ½ hour drive to Wellington tomorrow to pick up the Cook Strait Ferry to the South Island. Jakob was kind enough to fill up the campervan with water, which was very convenient as there was no water at Simpson's Scenic Reserve campground (which is why it's free), and we both needed showers. It was a lovely drive, albeit wet, off and on with rain, but we arrived just about 7:00, quickly settling into this offbeat little campground/parking area, having dinner, showers, catching up on the diary and reading before turning the lights out before 11:00, the latest we've gone to bed since we've been here! Must have recovered from the jet lag!
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