The 46 km track takes you around Lake Waikaremoana, located in Te Urewera National Park north-west of Napier. I have never been to this part of the country before and didn't really know what to expect. To access the start of the track we had to take a water taxi which was also scheduled to pick us up at the end 7 hours later. Unfortunately we couldn't ask for a later pick up as these were set times.
46 km over 7 hours sounds reasonable, we initially thought, but became a bit doubtful when we heard that the multi-sport freak Richard Usher took just under 5 hrs to complete the track. Hrm...7 hrs would be a stretch for us but on the other hand give us a good challenge on the last day of 2008.
We picked a gorgeous day to be out running in. In Napier they recorded temperatures of over 30 degrees and I believe that it was not much cooler where we were. Coming from Sweden, I am not too good with the heat. Charlie is much better since he comes from the tropical England and he was appointed to carry everything.
The track was pretty undulating and offered some amazing mature forests. I was thankful to run with tree cover most of the time.
There were some BIG trees in the woods...and some big dragon flies...
At this stage we realised that to get to the water taxi within 7 hrs would be pretty hard. The favourite part of the track was towards the end when we climbed up on the Panekite Bluff. The track followed the undulating ridge line with stunning views down over the lake. 
It was at this stage when we realised that it would be pretty tricky to get to the water taxi on time. The alternative to hitch down a gravel road with sporadic traffic movements didn't seem that appealing. We tried to push on but at last just sat down, eat the rest of our lollies and accepted the fact that we probably would miss the taxi. Energised after sour worms and ginger nuts, we spanked off the 1000 m descent pretty fast. The run down was fun!! Finally we only arrived about 20 minutes late to the water taxi and it had left! Bugger.
After a couple of utterly dull kilometers of gravel staring, a kind farmer picked us up and we shared the back seat with his leaking petrol tank, 10 kg of plums and intoxicated son. She'll be right!
It was a pretty exhausting day and we both severely struggled to keep the eyes open past mid night. Charlie's parents also nodded off but managed to wake up to say Happy New years! About 10 minutes later we were all in bed. What a bunch of party people we are! Well at least Charlie and I did better than the previous year when we went to bed at 11pm to get up early to run the Routeburn track.
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