After a couple days rest I decided I'd like to do the Kepler Track aswell which is a great walk here in NZ, squeezing the 3-4 days walk in two to save money as the great walk huts are so expensive (50$ a night!). So that leaves me with two days of 30k's each, a difference in altitude of ~1000m for the first day and one night camping.
The backpack was much lighter with not having to carry food for eight days and the track condition is much better on a great walk so I reconed that this would work :)
After waking up I decided to sleep longer because the weather was unomfortable.. so I started late at 10.20 but the rain ended shortly after that. 3 hours to Luxmore hut (13km - they calculated 5 to 6 hrs), having a break with spots of visibility and continuing for the the 2nd 'day trip'. Thanks to the good track conditions the level of exaustion was alright (you could have pushed a wheelchair over most the way).
I don't think I can complain with the views I had. Though I've been stuck in a cloud some time and couldn't see the other mountain ridges I saw something of the landscape - more than the ones having done the trip a few hours earlier who had seen nothing at all. Plus as I've been a bit late I had the entire track just for me :-) Save for the last part which I jogged down with the Doc Ranger Robbie who told me some interesting stuff.
Including that the 'shortcut' old trail bridge was broken in the middle - which he told me after we passed it.
Arrived at 6 at the camping ground (for which I just paid 15 bucks), so it took me 4 hrs for the remaining 15km. Short walk to a waterfall, which was not spectacular, but the blue duck was which is a very rare bird!
Somewhere in the night the rain started which wasn't to terminate till 6pm the following day - which coincidently was my 2nd day walking the remaining 34k's.
On the upperhand there've been beautiful waterfalls everywhere and this time I knew that nothing would remain dry, so I didn't had to evade mudpools. Passed the dead marshes (they filmed those here) and arrived at the carpark around 6pm, little time before the rain stopped! Vivi made me some tee and it felt good to get hurting feet out of my wet boots! Was worth it though