The End (Part Three)

North Arm hut was a fun night as nearly everyone was familiar, most of us having stayed together at the Port Williams hut. However, because you can start at either end of the track, we did have a group of 7 Kiwi Uni students and a girl who ended up being the flatmate of a friend and lives just down the road from me. But it was a fun, boisterous evening nonetheless. (I think I like that word today: nonetheless)We were even more squished in our sleeping arrangement that night. Where there was room for three people, we put four. And this night Rue and I slept on the top bunk instead of the bottom. With the combination of extra people, being on the top bunk AND being in the same room as the stove, we were extremely toasty. I woke up at 3am (I'm estimating) roasting and in great use of a toilet. [there's this phenomenon my friends and I have noticed since arriving here: whereas one may have made it through the night without needing to pee, now you can't without dehydrating yourself. my flatmate Angela, who used to only get up once, now routinely gets up three times. Heather, you would go crazy here - I don't drink water for an hour before bed and I still wake up with a raging bladder! we theorise that the water contains a diuretic. that's all there is to it. and the information about Angela has already been posted on her blog site, so I know she doesn't mind me sharing, for humor's sake, of course] So, back to waking up in the middle of the night...The longdrops (toilets, and they do call them longdrops, Dani) are located a fair but entirely understandable distance from the hut. When I got outside I actually thought the sun was beginning to rise because the moon was so full. I was a little worried about a confrontation with an opossom. The one I'd run into earlier was bigger than the average housecat and looked not unlike an overgrown rat. Fortunately, it had rattled my nerves so completely that my bloodcurdling shriek sent it bolting. This time, I made it to the toilet without such an event. The walk was successful in cooling me down and I slept much better until morning. Breakfast was much the same as the day before, only this morning was Easter! Anna had brought chocolate eggs for herself, Mattias and Markus, it was sweet when she whipped them out and set them next to all of their breakfast bowls. After eating we cleaned up, chopped some more wood and got on our way by 10:45am. It was another dry day, but the trail was still extremely muddy. Thankfully, no one fell although we did have some friendly competition to race down the trail. Lots of singing and conversation about home countries and languages. Then we were done with the track and back in Oban. Just like that. But it was wonderful. Rue and I barely made the 4pm ferry after checking back in at the DOC and made it back to Dunedin by 9pm. We'll probably never see Bas again, but Markus is traveling through in a couple of weeks. Bittersweet but no regrets!