Te Araroa: the "purist"

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The Blissful Hiker learns that she actually misses the muddy, barely-there trail of New Zealand's "advanced tramping" and longs for the allure of the unknown. 

In this episode: 

1. Blissful walks from Marianne and Allan's farm toward the Pureora Forest, all on road but happy to walk every step of the Te Araroa.
2. She walks in on-again-off-again rain through farmland in a karst landscape of limestone outcroppings and cone-shaped hills. Kind Kiwis make the walk a pleasure.
3. She meets other thru-hikers at the Ngaherenga campsite, all having skipped the last sections and call Blissful a "purist." 
4. Blissful enters the Pureora Forest on the Timber Trail, a wide shared mountain biking trail, but longs for the side side trails back into the bush to the Bog Inn and Pureora's summit, where she spies volcanic Mount Ruapehu.
5. She crosses two enormous suspension bridges and camps by a Harrisons Creek, where a hunter shows up with a deer, sharing the tenderest morsels.

MUSIC: The music in this episode is Argentine composer Angel Lasala’s Poema del Pastor Coya as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano

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