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For a while it's back to boardwalk as we cross boggy areas.
There's certainly plenty of variety. We stay for a while longer beside the river.
We cross most of the boulder creeks without getting our feet seriously wet, but you can see that given a bit of rain these could be quite challenging.
We leave the river for a stiff climb, even a scramble in places, for a couple of hundred metres during which I am too busy to even think of taking photos. At the top, we find Carol and Mike have dropped their packs at the hut and come back to meet us. We head through more or less level bush and across an open field to Cannibal Gorge Hut, the name a reference to the fate of the losing side in a historic Maori dispute about ownership of the valley.
Mike is a longtime admirer of the Duke of Edinburgh. Buggered as I am, I nevertheless stop to grab a picture of a small alpine wildflower that I have yet to identify. Wild flowers are a constant feature of our walk along the St James.
The setting sun is great on the hills behind the hut, but boy, am I looking forward to putting my feet up.
I dry off, change into my polyprops, and write up my diary while the memories are still fresh. Miranda and Carol put the dinner on to soak - one of my dried mince specials - and Mike produces a bottle of wine from his pack. He's only with us for a couple of days so he has a bit of spare carrying capacity.
We share the hut for the night with a German couple who are travelling in the opposite direction. Their English is slightly better than our German, but not a lot.
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