The struggle is real!

We headed off from Tutukaka after 7am road walking. Luckily for us the roads are nice and quite and we had plenty of warning if a car was coming. The first 6km was easy, but it sure didn’t feel it. We got to Matapouri which looks exactly how I remembered it.

The mermaid pools have a Rahui and are closed until further notice. I wanted to take Rowan there, apparently lots and lots of pollution has made the iwi close it. In summer weekends they got up to 1000 people there a day and it just got abused. We took a short break at some picnic tables then stumbled up the hill. Rowan thinks possibly the alcohol is causing our strain today, not that we drank much but the fact that it is dehydrating and we both didn’t drink much water after our beers. We get to the top of Whale Bay Reserve and get a stunning view.

As we plod along a suzuki swift stops to chat. This big tatted Māori fella starts a full conversation with us in the middle of the road. We have a good chat and he is super friendly. Tells us about his property down the road and how he got it for really cheap ($250k). We tell him we would love block like that and he says “oh I will give you my number I can find you a bit of land, I will just pull the car off the road and give it to you.” He pulls off the road and we chat some more, he tells us he has spent most his life in jail and he is an ex head hunter. He also tells us we are welcome to stay with him anytime we like. We say our goodbyes and he leaves us with a sample of local produce that Northland is well known for. Bloody nice guy Rowan and I plan to visit him in the future. We get down to Woolleys Bay, and collapse under a tree for a break. As we leave and head up the hill we see old Mr Woolley on his quad bike doing the farming rounds. We finally make it over to Sandy Bay Beach (half way point) and get chatting to father and daughter who live in Ngunguru who have been surfing. We chat for a good 15min and realise the daughters partner is related to the guy James who helped us across the Ngunguru estuary. Such a small world. We only walk a 100m then we get chatting to a couple who are off to do some metal detecting. They live permanently in their camper and travel the country, there goes another 15min chatting. We set off again and now finally back on the official Te Araroa track. We head over farmland and do the Whananaki Coastal Track. It is okay, nothing to write home about. The Waipu Coastal Track is much better and has been our favourite so far.

The day feels like it is taking forever, we finally get to the footbridge. This is the longest footbridge is the southern hemisphere and it is 395m long and was built in 1947. Well I don’t think many planks of wood have been changed in all that time, there were some dodgy bendy ones so I got Rowan to go first because he is heavier than me. We also see a Eagle ray stingray. We finally get to the local store and collapse. It closes at 5pm so we order some kai and have an early dinner. As we munch on our chips a couple of familiar faces show up. Kerry & Mark, trail angels from Mangawhai! We get talking and they are here looking for an alternative route for the track a between Helena Bay & here. There is currently a detour here as the track has been closed due to Kauri die back. The detour means you have a lot more kilometres and also a lot of road walking. So hopefully the new route they are trialling works out. All up today we walked 20km and it was a real push our bodies and our minds were struggling. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.