As a result of poor planning and heavy delays by wind, today was day two of the one day trip to Te Anau. I had packed plenty of food but as mentioned yesterday, not enough water.

Due to the giant gathering of sand flies between my tent mesh and rain fly I gave another attempt at the art of packing all gear except tent in my panniers before unzipping the door and finally succeeded. Leaped out, packed the tent with minimal annoyance from flies and took off down the beautiful dirt road through the forest out from camp. I could hear the the wind hitting the trees around me hard already, not a good sign.

The moment I get out from the woods I get slammed by wind and it never gives up. I grit my teeth, stare at the ground and push on. Trying to avoid drinking much of the water I took from the tap at camp despite how thirsty I was. I didn't see a single place to fill a water bottle in my 65km from camp to Te Anau and wound up drinking a bottles worth of whatever is found in unfiltered spring water. Lesson learned, don't expect water at domains or DoC camps to drinkable (but it probably won't kill you if you do).

The terrain was pretty rough for most of the trip which didn't help. At some point the wind changed a little and a bend in the road gave me the full force tail wind. Got rocketed down a slight decline at 35kmh which given the quality of the road was terrifying but I wasn't going to complain.

Tomorrow I head north for a short side trip so maybe I'll catch a different side of the wind.