Honeymoon: Phase Six: Overland Track: Day 2

We awoke to a good steady rain. I looked around the tent to see if anything was wet on the inside. It was all dry as a bone and it made me happy that I picked up this tent before the trip. I dragged myself out of bed and put on all my rain gear. I got my stuff together and I got myself out of the tent. I left my beautiful, young wife to get ready in the tent while I braved the rain. After waiting for quite some time, I pried Jacqueline out of the tent so that I could pack it up since it needed to go at the bottom of the pack. The garbage bags that we bought to protect our gear and keep it dry were very flimsy and we did the best to keep the whole bag from ripping as we put our stuff inside.

 Finally we were packed up and ready to go, but Jacqueline was not in the mood for this kind of weather. We tried to keep our spirits up saying that we had been blessed so far on the trip with such great weather, that this was a situation that we should come to expect. The beginning of the trail from Lake Windermere was mostly boardwalk as we went through the steppe grass terrain. We came to some great views (if it would not have been raining) of the Forth Valley. The funny thing about it was that we could see the Old Pelion Hut across the valley, but seeing the size of the valley, we knew it was not going to be a short process. After that, the trail sent us into the trees. Here we were entering the rainforest terrain and for some reason, the boardwalk quit and the mud began. The difficulties in this terrain were not only slogging through the mud, but the exposed tree roots making walking slick and difficult. Jacqueline was fairly grumpy about all of this, but it kept up the adventurous part of the whole trip for me. It did not help her to see that we were being passed by some high school age students randomly throughout the day or that her boots were digging into the back of her heels so much that she was constantly in pain. The trail continued endlessly and so did the rain. There were creeks and gorges to check out, but mainly we slogged this section of the trail. Eventually after doing quite a bit of climbing, we began to descend. This lead us to the Old Pelion Hut and eventually to our final destination at the New Pelion Hut. It took us about 5 hours and on this day, the times posted were for the most part correct. We tried to locate a camp spot, but there did not seem to be any of the tent pads except for one right in the front already taken by another group. We settled for the hut on this night and honestly on a rainy day and night, it was a welcome relief. We took our shoes and socks off and I was surprised to see that I was bleeding rather profusely out of my foot. This was strange and the same thing had happened after our Hounslow Heath Track walk. It did not look to be a large cut, but it was very difficult to stop the bleeding. Later, I was to learn from a man from Sydney that the cause of this was that I had been bitten by a leech. When I thought about it later, I did remember the feel of something slimy going down my gaiter, but I just assumed it was water that had found its way in there. Once I finally got the bleeding to coagulate and we got our warm clothes on, we settled in for a day and evening of relaxation. We played a lot of card games and talked to other people in the Pelion Hut. Most of the folks were from Australia including a large school group. There was one guy, Sebastian who showed up late in the evening, who was from Germany, but almost everyone there seemed to be Australian. We occasionally went outside to see the wildlife as it was getting to be commonplace to see the wallabies and pademelons. We even saw another small marsupial, the quoll, hiding under some planks near the bathroom. The hut ended up being very nice for cooking, eating, and getting our stuff to be somewhat dry, but when it came time to sleep, it was not very private and I struggled with the snoring of someone who was not even in the same room as us. Still, it was nice to interact with others, as much of our trip was just Jacqueline and I, so it was fine to get a short break from that. We hoped as we could not tell from the inside, that when we awoke in the morning, the rain would have ceased and we would be blessed with another beautiful day.