🗓️ October 26, 2025

🏁 Kilometers : 136

Today's plan: a 20-kilometer walk along a main road once again. Six kilometers along a fairly busy road, then the rest on a path that's half tarmac, half gravel; fortunately, it's Sunday morning, so there are fewer vehicles on the road. My pack is a bit heavier than yesterday's because of the food I'll need for the next five days. The walk along the busy road isn't very pleasant, but it ends quickly. The next 14 kilometers take us through farmland. Enclosures follow one after another with lots of cows, a few sheep, and horses. Behind the farms rise the first hills that precede the next mountain range we'll have to cross tomorrow. These hills are idyllic, dotted with small terraces created by the animals grazing on their grassy slopes.

After completing the 14 kilometers, I reached the Hare Krishna sanctuary, a house run by two warm and welcoming hosts, Abhay and Jaya. Abhay, the husband, is from New Zealand, a bit of a hippie, spontaneous and always smiling. Jaya, his wife, is from southern India; kindness is written all over her face, and her smile and gentle nature immediately make you feel welcome. They offer to let you spend the night in their garden and provide a vegan lunch in exchange for a "Koha" (in Māori, a donation). They usually ask for $10. I gave $20, even though it would have been more appropriate to give $100. A quick note about the local currency, the New Zealand dollar: $1 is equal to €0.50. So you can easily do the math. They ask for a $10 donation, so €5... it's truly symbolic. Jaya prepared an Indian meal for us: lentil dal with papadum, a kind of crispy, very tasty flatbread usually made from lentils or chickpeas, which adds a nice texture to the dish. She generously served us seconds. Abhay then showed us around his garden, which turned out to be enormous. They don't grow many vegetables, but they told us they are self-sufficient in fruit. All around me, I could see a profusion of fruit trees: lemon trees, mandarin trees, banana trees, sugarcane, a papaya tree, and other trees and shrubs whose names and fruits I didn't know. Numerous flowers grew wildly throughout the grounds. Small huts were scattered across the property, serving as toilets or basic kitchens for passing hikers. A little further down, a river is flowing where it is possible to swim if you aren’t too sensitive to the cold. The riverbank where you can enter the water is accessible via a small wooden bridge. The view of the surrounding nature is superb. This garden has something of paradise about it; the hosts surely are angels.

There are about fifteen of us hikers spending the night here. We scatter our tents throughout the garden. We all want to go for a swim in the river, but only half of us go in, the other half discouraged by its chill. The setting is so delightful that, given the choice, I prefer a cold dip here to a hot shower elsewhere. We are then offered a demonstration of sugarcane pressing to extract the juice. Abhay gives us the instructions, and one after the other, we turn the crank of the mechanical press. Each sugarcane yields about one liter of juice. When we taste the nectar, Abhay suggests adding a small amount of Indian black salt to enhance the flavor. It's indeed very good, and the juice contains all sorts of benefits (fiber, iron, calcium, magnesium, vitamins A, B, and C, and antioxidants).

Evening quickly settles in the Garden of Eden, and the temperature suddenly drops. We all retreat to our tents. The afternoon in the garden was pleasant, like a soothing interlude, but we know that tomorrow will be tough: the Raetea Forest is the second obstacle on our path, and crossing it will be no easy feat.