Day 3 saw us walking back to Whakapapa, passing the gushing Taranaki Falls and arriving back at Whakapapa after a reasonably long but relatively easy trudge; the carrot for the donkey on those last long kilometres was the thought of a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke that I had stashed in the depths of Zed. I gave Delia a lift to National Park, the nearest village to the park after Whakapapa, and after giving a lift to two hitchers to the Ketetahi road end, I drove to Taupo, where I dropped Monika off at a hostel and found myself a place to camp.
That night I redeemed two vouchers I'd got from the petrol station for two McDonald's cheeseburgers, and got a further NZ$2 fish and chips that I ate on the lake shore. After pasta for the last three days, it was probably the best junk food I'd ever had, ranking up there with the Big Macs I'd crammed into my face in Christchurch. Sometimes it's good to be bad, especially when you feel you've earned it...