A much needed break!

A bit passed our best before date, we decide Waitangi Campground is so peaceful that we stay 4 nights and 3 days. We take a small walk each day to keep the body moving but other than that we lazed about, talked to neighbours, read our books and enjoyed the scenery

Back and forth we debated going a bit further to Kerikeri, in the end we decided to not go any further. Our neighbour offered a ride for tomorrow to Kerikeri so we can hitch back to Whangaparaoa easily. Rowan’s school friend is getting married, we need to head to Australia so he can be a bridesmaid. The following weekend my grandparents are having their 70th Wedding Anniversary which has been delayed several times. So we are pausing our walk for celebrations

With a short day ahead we left rather late and headed to Russell. Lucky for us there is a small trail which meant we didn’t have to be on the road. Along the road two bikers gave us a toot, we recognised them straight away as the bikers at the farm and waved back. Once we got into Russell we saw them at the wharf and had a chat. There was an op shop we had a sniff around in too while we waited for the next ferry.

The ferry comes every 30min which makes it a very fast wait.

Once in Paihia we went to get some lunch at a rib shack place. Food was good but not great. A couple of beers later and a chat to our waiter we found that the local backpackers owner was in having lunch too. He said we could make our way over and stay the night in the campground bit. So we slowly walked there, mostly because I have a brand new blister on my sole. Finally we get there and the place is pretty grotty and it felt dodge as. We decide to go back to our original plan and stay at the Waitangi campground, so we head back the way we came. Finally at the campground we bump into our first Te Araroa hiker. Dirk the German is heading south. We chat and swap notes about where and where not to go. Heading for a rest day tomorrow, can’t wait!

Our longest day yet!

We got 23.5km today, I am now pretty pooped! We headed off around 8.30am and headed down the road. We found quite a few escaped moos along the way. We carried on Russell Road which turned into dirt road. It is a beautiful walk through Kauri forest, there was literally no one on the road. We only saw one lady and her dog Muffin at the very end of the gravel road.

About 12km of our day was done when we hit tarmac again. About 4km after that I started getting pretty worn out as we tried to up the pace. Well we slowed back down and took our time. Throughout the day we took plenty of breaks and I am glad we did. We got offered a ride 500m from the campground so I said thank you but no thank you. Typical I would have said yes if I it was earlier. We arrived at Orongo Bay at 5.30pm there is a food truck as we walk into camp, lucky for us they close at 7pm. Quickly pitch camp, shower and go to eat! Rata’s kitchen has Asian fusion food and it was delicious. We went back for seconds as it was so good.

Did I even have a rest day?

Man I am exhausted! Today was harder than it should be. I feel like my body is screaming for me to give it a break for a few days not just one day. Mentally I started out all good around 15km to walk and fairly easy road walking. But quickly it got harder and harder. I had to take a few breaks in order to get my body to our destination. When I finally saw the signs for the farm I was very happy. Finally we made it. The Farm is a little like a hippy comune. There are 25 full time people living here, and a bunch of transient stayers and of course campers. 1000 acres of land that has mostly dairy cows, anyone is welcome to stay.

I am trying to get my head around getting up towards Russell tomorrow, it is quite a few km walk ahead so here is hoping my bod is up for it

We decided to take a rest day. Alex & Dave are heading into Whangarei for a boat part and we decide to tag along. We get a chance to do a small shop at the supermarket and some McDonald’s for breakfast. We got back around lunchtime had a cuppa and walked down to Helena Bay. The walk was lovely, Toto & Kowhai ran and ran fetching sticks. We wore them out, once we got home the went fast asleep. In the estuary there are hundreds of eels. Apparently locals have been feeding them for years and some are 50 years old. It was a nice chill day Dave cooked a roast for dinner, we did apple pie for dessert. Feeling a bit more fresh.

The day begins great, Mark & Kerry offer us a lift to bypass all of the road section. Part of me wanted to say no, but we say yes. We had already made the decision that we are not allowed to put a thumb out but we can say yes to lifts if they are offered. This now means we don’t need to walk the purple alternative road route, we start at the 314km mark. This is 20km taken off our day already. I was tempted to have a rest day in Whananaki because we need one but this was worth another day. We knew we would need to break the hike up into two if we did all of it.

I feel a bit car sick once we finally reach the drop off point. We picked up another Te Araroa Trustee who is helping and doing a car shuffle with them. He automatically recognises us as his friend Patrick told him all about us. We met Patrick on Ocean Beach, he had the Ebike I was envious over. We get a photo with him for Patrick and we head off down the road. It is about a kilometre before we hop onto the farmers track. Eventually we reach a style which gets us into the bush, I see how muddy it is and we get our gaiters on.

We find a spot where the farmer (Rowan) has a small tank of drinkable water and a area for hikers to camp for the night. This is where we would have needed to stay to break up the walk. Further along we slowly climb up the ridge until we meet some cows. Which follow us in hope for some food. They are not happy when they realise we have none and moo very loudly.

We are now back on farm track for a while, until we get back into the bush. Once on the official Helena Bay Ridge Track we have a break. We need a lot of breaks today, mentally doing fine but our bodies are so tired. Rowan is trying to work out if our bodies are in need of something like protein. One of our biggest issues with todays track is we were told it is all down hill. Well it’s technically down, but there sure is a lot of down then back ups. My knees hurt going down and my thighs and legs burn going up. It takes us some time to walk down into Helena Bay

Dave a trail Angel comes and picks us up. I am very thankful as I am well worn out. He doesn’t live far off the track but I was done. Alex & Dave have a cool off grid set up. There is a caravan for us to sleep in, a flushing toilet and a hot shower. Dave & Alex Cook us up some Kai while we have a shower and a drink. Alex is an artist, it is really cool to see her studio. We eat and drink into the night, however we don’t last long. In bed by 8pm absolutely knackered, they say we can stay another night if we are needing a rest. Which I think is what we will do.

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.

A short day

Today we had a small walk of 4km to Tutukaka. The trail from Ngunguru is a bit pointless road walking. So we thought let’s head along the coast more. This also gave us a lot of time to prepare for the next 10 days or so ahead. As we were leaving Ngunguru we passed their local pataka kai (community pantry) and found lots of goodies, including a few freeze dried items. There was also some great apples that we ate straight away. There was loads of food in there and a couple of local people work for food companies who put it all in for the community. Definitely a great spot. Up the top of the hill we took our time looking at the views and all the way back to the Whangarei Heads.

When we arrived in Tutukaka we went straight to the holiday park. We got a site and set up camp. I got distracted by these little cuties.

Once unpacked we had a chance to take stock of our food and make a shopping list. Which we then filled at the local dairy. We took a walk down to the marina about 2pm looking for a late lunch but nothing was open so we headed back to camp and ate there. Later we headed back down the marina to get an early dinner. While at dinner a large stingray came along. I missed getting a photo as there were too many beady eyed birds eyeing up my dinner.

We got back to the campsite and the fire is roaring in the kitchen/tv room. We poured a glass of wine and now get to enjoy our books.

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.

Arrgh Matey!

We set off early to make the tide at Taiharuru estuary. On our way out of Kauri Mountain and down the road there are great views of the Whangarei Heads. Well according to the Te Araroa notes there are views. This is what I saw!

It was pretty wet and miserable. We had 4km of road walking before getting to the water. Off farmland straight into thick mangrove mud. Luckily this wasn’t the whole 3km journey through the estuary. There was water, sandy soft bits, sandy hard bits and of course sharp cockles stuck in our sandals. Once out of the estuary we had a small road walk of 1.5km to Treasure Island, Pataua South camp ground. The rain started driving in very hard. Luckily for us this was our destination. Feels quite weird arriving at 9.30am to where you are going for the day. The walk along the main road was like going back in time. I don’t think I have been here for 20 years but I have so many awesome memories. We found Nita at the shower block and she looks just as I remember her, doesn’t even look older. We set up camp in the foul weather head down to the office to pay. We got some coins for the showers, and enjoyed having a real wash for once. Whore washes are not the same as a hot shower. We spend the rest of the day attempting to dry clothes (nothing like putting on wet clothes in the morning). We have hid from the storm in the rumpus room. It has been really nice having memories pop into my head I thought were forgotten. I have a video somewhere of my first Easter here attempting to eat a small hard Easter egg. I have taken the time to catch up on my posts as my phone has been dead.