Blood sweat and lots of tears!

The day started early with a hard deadline ahead, if we miss we will be swimming to Ngunguru. I am glad I had a chance to get to Treasure Island campground before it has changed on to new owners, a blast from the past. 6am I am putting wet underwear, bra & everything (cue the small sympathy violin). The day started pretty well we did the first 5km in an hour which is the fastest we have done so far, we did have to walk fast to dry our clothes out. Mind you that was pretty easy road walking. We had another estuary crossing ahead. It was pretty muddy and manky at first, why did I bother washing my pants yesterday? In our sandals to keep our boots clean and dry we got to cross the Horahora river, we are not quite on dead low it is 8.30am. Well it goes deep, all the way up to my fufu. Nothing like a bit of salty water up the hoohaa to get you moving for the day. We cross over to Māori land, Violet a land owner let’s us walk through for a bit of koha. This area is stunning! I must say the locals here look after the water and land much better than us whiteys. As we hit the bottom of her property, it is mud, cow kaka mud. Half way through I have a hormonal menstural breakdown. Crying my eyes out about my sandals not staying on my feet. Rowan attempts to give me chocolate to fix the situation, it doesn’t work. We carry on a bit longer I have another cry. Rowan convinces me to put my boots on. I stubbornly agree. After my boots are on all red and puffy from so much crying look what I did!

Looks like we will be sharing your water Rowan. The most annoying thing is about 20m later we were out of the bush on Violet’s main land. Man the view from her place is superb, I would pay more koha just to have a picnic there. She tells us James gave her a heads up that we were heading through her land today. Really nice lady who wishes us the best. Rowan puts his boots on and I stuff a muesli bar down me for energy. 4.5km to get to James and we needed to get there by 11.30am. This part was all Māori roads which was in theory easy but I had to puff up some big hills. My batteries were running low. We make it to James by 11am! James & Wendy are really nice they have one of 3 properties in the area that are not owned by the local Māori. Nikau Bay, you can camp here without walking the distance. It is a idyllic spot and we plan to come back and enjoy his backyard. We contacted James a few days ago to see if he was around to get us across to Ngunguru, at this time of the year he is closed. However the 25km detour is also closed till October because of lambing. Lucky for us James said he can get us across but we can’t stay at his and we needed to get there before 11.30am. That was fine with us we were worried we would have to swim.

James gets us safely across and we get our boots back on. We have 2km to the local chippy. If that is not motivation I don’t know what is! We sit on the grass watching the seagulls and the tide come in. We are staying at a trail angels place down the road. She is not home yet so let’s us know where her spare key is and to let ourselves in. We have a lovely hot shower and relax and read our books. Donna Marie arrived home and started cooking dinner with Rowan’s help.

We had a lovely Thai soup to start. Then for the main a dish Donna Marie learned when living in America with Italian/Americans, stuffed seashell pasta. It was all delicious. After dinner we got a show as Donna Marie had band practice so for an hour and a half we had a rock concert in her home. I am way past by bed time now and yawning as I write this. We did 14.5km by lunchtime which was pretty rad.