Tidal Surprise

I awoke with the dawn. There were two possible trails away from Torrent Bay Village: a high-tide route and a low-tide route. I had planned on taking the high tide route in the morning, as low tide came at 3:30 AM, but when I awoke, the low tide route, which was right outside of our tent, was very passable. As the map showed the high-tide route taking a considerable detour, I quickly awoke a grumpy Ingrid and told her we were leaving. I packed up my things with the familiarity and quickness of a long-distance hiker and then watched the tide rise incredibly fast over the low-tide route as Ingrid packed painfully slow. In the fifteen minutes it took Ingrid to pack her things, the tidal flat (low-tide route), went from barren to half full of a thin layer of water, which crept ever further across the flat. The water literally moved over the flat at a foot per second. And by the time we reached the river close to the other side, the entire flat was covered. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants, and waded across the river just in time to miss an extraordinarily unpleasant higher tide. We hiked on to Anchorage, where Ingrid nursed her ankle, forgave me for making her hurriedly pack and cross a rising tide, and I filled up our water. We debated waiting at Anchorage for a water taxi, given Ingrid’s ankle, but she decided she wanted to continue hiking. Another nine miles of stunning hiking brought us back to Marahau, where a very cute, but lame in one foot, dog met us at the bathrooms. We changed to clean clothes, played with the dog, walked to our car, and then drove to Westport along the western coast. When planning the trip, I decided to stop over at Westport because it split a six and a half hour drive between Abel Tasman and Franz Josef (our next exciting stopover). With such high expectations, Westport did not disappoint. It was cold and raining on and off when we arrived; the heater in our hotel did not work; the dryers (after we did laundry) did not come close to drying our clothes; the “best restaurant in town” had mediocre food, including our first venture with whitebait patties (whitebait is a very small fish that is hugely popular on the west coast) which were basically a fish omelet; the town architecture was comprised of cinderblocks and plywood, etc. The two saviors for Westport on our trip were the people were very nice and, at a convenience store, Ingrid and I found gluten-free fruity popcorn, which tasted like fruit-loops.