Day 6 | Broadwood
19 October 2022 | 18° | 27km
The first part of the detour due to some disease in the forest on the actual trail to protect the kaui trees. I decide to hitch the first 5 miles as it is a state highway which is not recommended for hitchhiking. 15 minutes after I put my thumb out a young lady is picking me up .
She just took her kids to school and is now on her way back home. I get off at Rohrer Araroa Road. The trail is a gravel road for most of the morning, passing by a lot of farm land with cows. From Eva - who used to work on a dairy farm for some time - I learn the difference between dairy cows and meat cows. While baby dairy cows are separated from their mom so they don’t drink all of the milk, little meat cows can stay with their parents.
I also learn that dairy cow give roughly 40 liter of milk every day. Wow, that’s a lot. The baby cows are pretty shy, but we manage to make friends and cuddle with them for a while. Today we enter “the bushes” for the first time and do a small climb of 590 m. It is pretty muddy but feels great to be “off the road”. So many different kinds of birds in the trees! I reach the campsite at Broadwood around 4 PM and by the end of the day it will be 16 hikers camping there.
Thought of the day: Do baby cows miss their moms?
