Day 13 – Mararoa River to North Mavora Lake Campground

Woke early to take advantage of the early morning chill.  It was so chilly in fact, I started the hiking day wearing my fleece, vest, and raincoat.  The weather continued to be overcast most of the day though, resulting in very pleasant hiking weather once I warmed up.

I soon reached an intersection where the Mavora Lakes Road departed north (oh how I despised that easy but dull causeway by now) while a DoC trail crossed on a swingbridge and continued on the true right of the Mararoa River, then around South Mavora Lake.  True right or left in Kiwi parlance is the direction determined as facing downstream, a very useful idiom for anyone navigating near a river.

The trail I found myself on was gorgeous - the best trail I have been on so far.  The track was clear, it was well marked, and it traversed a lovely beech forest with a mossy ground cover.  It also followed the river, by now far from any farming activity.  I took a break at the top of a mossy embankment overlooking a slow bend in the Mararoa.  It was exteremely silent and peaceful, and I loved it.

At times, the silence in this section of trail was eerie.  There was nothing but the occasional sound of the river rushing through a tight spot, or a muted car on the distant road.  Much of this can be chalked up to New Zealand’s paucity of animals.  When New Zealand parted ways with Gondwanaland some 80 million years ago, it began a process of evolution isolated from the rest of the world.  The result was the giraffe-like giant moa (now extinct), the saccharine-cute kiwi, and in general an ecosystem where most niches were filled by birds, often flightless ones.

In more recent times, certain thumbed mammals contrived transport to this ark of birdlife.  With the Maori came the Polynesian dog and Polynesian rat, with a taste for those easy to catch birds and their eggs.  The Maori themselves had a powerful hunger for the moa, especially since their crops mostly failed to grow here.  Later, Europeans brought the Norway rat, the even more pernicious ship rat, and the dog.  After that was a plague of rabbits that started eating all the carefully cultivated European crops.  So weasels, stoats, and ferrets were introduced.  Unsurprisingly these too quickly bred out of control, and they are now one of the biggest threats to native birds.

This all adds up to an ecosystem with most of its land animals gone.  Eerie indeed.  The plantlife seems to flourish anyhow, unaware of its loneliness.  For me as a hiker accustomed to spotting cute mammals everywhere, it’s odd.  Evidently there is an oversupply of deer, but I haven’t even seen one of those, while in parkland in the States, you couldn’t swing a dead possum without hitting a deer.

Still, I greatly enjoyed the trail, and had it to myself till I recrossed the Mararoa to the North Mavora Lakes Campground.  This campground is accessible by road, so I had several holidaymakers for company, but it was a decent spot, so I made camp for the night.

I took advantage of the handy firepit to keep warm while I cooked dinner.  When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I never had energy at the end of the day to build a fire, but here I’ve done it several times, largely because it’s so easy.  The huts and campgrounds here have ridiculous amounts of unused deadwood lying around within spitting distance.  Perhaps it’s because they see less traffic, but an equivalent campground in the States would have long been stripped of all burnable material.  Also, I learned a great trick from the hunters at Princhester Hut: dead beech branches with the leaves still on light easily, and they burn hot and fast, making them ideal fire starters.

All in all, today was a fantastic day, one that made me think “This is what I came here for.”  The only two lowlights: I’ve developed a painful pinch on my left hip when my packbelt sits just so.  I’m trying to figure what it is, but it’s confusing – there’s no assymetry in my pack or clothes that should cause a problem only on one hip.  Second, the battery on my camera finally ran out, leaving me unable to take photos until I pick up the package with my charger in Queenstown.  [I would especially regret this, as the next few days turn out to be some of the best scenery so far.]