New Zealand 2023: Heaphy Track Day 3 – James Mackay Hut to Perry Saddle Hut

We woke up to beautiful weather and were on the track around 9am, going back to where we had come from the day before. Walking in the opposite direction offered a new perspective and everything looked much more colourful with sun, blue sky and some high white cloud, compared to the drearier, overcast weather of the day before. Two of the assistance tour guides in James Mackay hut reported seeing two takahe on or near the track the day before, so we were on high alert, hoping to see one in the area they saw them, but alas.

At the Saxon hut we met a New Zealand couple who saw the father and son we met in the Perry Saddle hut the first night. The couple met them in the parking lot when they started their hike, and the father and son told them they saw three kiwis on their way down, after the leaving the Perry Saddle hut at around 5am. Very lucky!

Just before Gouland Downs hut we explored the other caves that were described in the Perry Saddle hut as worth seeing. One crossed underneath the trail and then another one crossed back a little further down, which was kind of cool. (Full disclosure: these were caves where you could see daylight at the other end, with no narrow passages going to darker and deeper places.) We also saw a large cave with two modest waterfalls coming down inside them. Don cooled off by sticking his head under one of them.

At Gouland Downs hut we met a nice Canadian guy (with Dutch heritage) in his mid- to late twenties who had moved to New Zealand six year earlier after meeting his New Zealand partner in New Zealand while travelling. We told him about the caves and the various bird sightings, and he told us he was a birder and had never seen either a kiwi or a takahe in the wild and would love to see either.

We had seven kilometers left to go to Perry Saddle hut, and the trail had quite a few uphill sections (more than I remembered going down) about which Don and I kept saying to each other “but it’s a gradual uphill”. The last three kilometers before the hut seemed to take forever for both of us with at long last the one kilometer marker appearing on the side of the trail. Although the backpacks were somewhat lighter compared to two days earlier, this was our second 25 km day with backpack (after 17.5 kms the first day), something our bodies were clearly not quite used to (yet).

We had the 28-bunk hut all to ourselves that night which was good from the point of view we did not have to share a bunk room with anyone and unfortunate from the point of view of not being able to exchange stories with other hikers. We reached the hut close to 5:30pm, settled in, had our supper and went to bed before it was even dark as we were tired.