Days 14-19: Down the Coast

We arrived in Ngunguru yesterday, and are taking a rest day here at the Riverbank Homestay with amazing hosts Hilton & Melva Ward. They maintain (on a volunteer basis) nearby parts of the trail, and offer free camping to any Te Araroa trampers. After 2 days off in Kerikeri, we've come another 115km, for a total of 335km, and passed two significant waypoints on our way here: 10% (300 km) of the trail completed! and we walked all the way across the country (the easy way - west to east)!


This last section was much easier going than the previous section, and we had some great coastal views along the way. Camping was a little more of a challenge, due to more frequent towns and lots of private land, but we still managed to find some pretty good spots.

Our two zero days in Kerikeri were good, and Liz's ankle was feeling much better after some rest and repeated icing with the bag of mixed vegetables (which were mixed mush by the time we left). Normally this section would have taken us 4 days, but we shortened our days a bit and stretched it to 5 to see how the ankle would hold up.

Out of Kerikeri, we had a relatively uneventful day of walking through forest on 4wd roads. On our way, we had our first wrong turn of the trip - we followed a sign to Haruru Falls instead of following Haruru Falls Rd. Luckily we realized within a kilometer, so the detour wasn't too long. Forgivable, I guess, but as the navigator I was mad to give up my unblemished record so early in the trip.

Luckily, we had plenty of water when we passed this.
Not as bad as putrified cow, but still would require desperation.

When the forest ended, we popped out onto the east coast, just north of Paihia, along the Bay of Islands. This is a pretty popular tourist and vacation spot. It had rained on and off all day long, so we had our rain gear on. Our rain gear is a bright blue jacket and pair of pants, and it's pretty loose, so we look fairly ridiculous when we're wearing it:

Full rain gear from the Colorado Trail, 2011

Rain gear in Paihia

Needless to say, we got some strange looks and comments on the way into town. We passed a golf course, and one of the golfers was staring us down - I waved, but he just kept staring. I guess we were the first trampers he had seen in the rain. Other people we passed on the sidewalk gave us good-natured laughs and said things like "Dressed for the weather, eh?" Five minutes later it started pouring again, and we felt vindicated. And, yes, a little schadenfreude as all the tourists scampered to the nearest awnings. We camped that night in a holiday park (campground) in Paihia.

That evening we saw a crazy rainbow from the holiday park

EVERYONE: We've found the end of the rainbow! It's in New Zealand.
Sadly, we did not receive any Lucky Charms.

That evening, we had a decision to make. A few kilometers down the beach, we could pay $100 for a water taxi to take us across the Waikare Inlet to the next portion of the trail, or we could take a $1 ferry and then road walk for 20 kms to get to the same spot. After quite a bit of hemming and hawing, we decided to take the water taxi to avoid stressing Liz's ankle too much (or at least that's what we told ourselves).

The landing is only accessible at high tide, so our taxi was scheduled for 12:30 the next afternoon. We slept in, let our tent and gear dry out the next morning, then headed a few kms down the coast to Opua, where we caught the boat. While we were on the boat, the cost seemed justified ("Wow we've come a long way in this boat, glad we didn't have to walk that"), but our wallets are still stinging a little bit. It was a flat cost, so if we had been able to find other people to go across with, the price per person would have been lower, but sadly we still seem to be in a dead zone of trampers - we hadn't seen anyone since James & Michelle before Kerikeri. (Spoiler alert: we met up with James and Michelle later in Ngunguru, and they said they took the ferry and were able to hitchhike most of the road walk, but it wasn't the easiest place to catch a ride.)

Liz doing a little preventative mending of our tent in the holiday park

The coastal trail between Paihia and Opua was right along the water

Approaching the landing at high speed through a
relatively narrow channel in the mangroves

After arriving at the Waikare landing, we headed into Russell Forest. The beginning was quite easy going - mostly 4wd tracks - then we came to another river walk. This walk was slightly slower going than the last river walk, with more boulders and larger rocks to navigate through in the river. It also slightly edged out the last river walk in terms of prettiness.

Liz, bravely fording the shin deep river

After the river walk, we came to what was labelled as a "hut" on the map, but was more of a covered picnic table and benches. Slightly disappointing, but still really nice to have somewhere to sit, so we camped there for the night.

The "hut" in Russell Forest

The next day, we exited the forest and had a long, boring road walk. Along the way, a few dozen classic cars passed us - it was Sunday, and there must have been a show of some sort up the road. We eventually turned off the main road, and approached our planned camping spot, and found it to all be fenced, private land. We also got to a river we had been planning to fill our water from, and found it was brackish water. Double whammy.

We kept going down the road, and stopped at a farm to fill up our water, and maybe try to camp. The man we met at the farm was very nice, and filled our water for us, but didn't seem like he wanted us to hang around for very long, so we kept walking.

Along the road we encountered a mama sheep and a baby sheep...
some hearts may have melted at this point

Luckily, a few kms up a steep gravel road, we found a great and unexpected spot to camp in a little opening on a ridge, just off the road. We were slightly nervous about whether or not camping was allowed on this spot, but we were pretty tired, pretty sure it was DoC land, and pretty fond of the view, so we stopped.

The view from our campsite - awesome!

We had a short day planned the next day, so we slept in a bit. After packing up, we got a visitor - a nice big bull started munching grass between us and the road. We were nicely asking him to move when a DoC guy pulled up on a quad and shooed him away. The DoC guy was there to check some possum traps, and didn't seem concerned that we were there, so our stress the night before was apparently for nothing.

Hello Mr. Bull, would you please mind moving out of the way and not charging me?

After that, we headed into the next forest. It was the first "legit" trail in a few days - meaning it was only accessible by foot, rather than an ATV or 4wd track. It was well marked (despite warnings in the trail notes to the contrary), and very pretty.

We passed a milestone in the forest!

We exited the forest into farmland. We've walked past a good bit of farmland, and it's all beautiful - rolling green hills with trees, cows, and sheep. You know, kind of like that Windows desktop.

Pretty sure they took that Windows desktop picture in NZ

From there, we walked along an estuary, and it happened to be high tide, so we had to get creative to keep our feet dry. We ended up in Whananaki North, and stayed at another holiday park. We're getting a bit tired of paying $15 per person for a flat tent spot, a kitchen, and toilets, and will probably be trying harder to find free spots off the road somewhere. It was very convenient though - just off the trail, and next to a small store where we got some ginger beer ice bars... amazing.

A sign at the holiday park where we stayed

The next day was our longest walk of this stretch - 27 kms, so we got an early start. The first thing we did was cross the longest footbridge in the southern hemisphere!

Signs never lie

It was pretty long. And a little rickety.
At one point, Liz turned around and said "Can you walk a little further behind me please?"

Then we went down a nice coastal section, on a gravel trail up behind amazing houses with private beaches. At some point during this, we started discussing which one we would buy as our vacation home.

One of the more interesting houses we passed

After that, we went back into the forest for a bit, and passed a huge kauri tree named Tane Moana. It was big.

Tane Moana. English translation: General Sherman?

Finally we emerged onto the road, and headed into Ngunguru. We picked up food for our next section from the small, somewhat expensive, but surprisingly well stocked store in town. Then we headed just past town to the Riverbank Homestay.

Once again we were floored by Kiwi hospitality - without any hesitation, Melva welcomed us in, sat us down at the table, and asked if we wanted to have dinner with them. Somehow she managed to turn dinner for 3 into dinner for 5, even though she was rushing out to a meeting shortly after dinner. For the second time on this trip, we found ourselves making friends with complete strangers over dinner in their house less than an hour after meeting them!

Today we spent doing some hand washing, eating, relaxing, chatting with Melva, and writing this post from a real computer with a real keyboard! So much easier and faster than wrestling with the phone... Liz's foot is not totally healed, but is much improved. We're hoping this rest day will get it back to full strength. James and Michelle also showed up today, and it sounds like we'll be together on the trail for at least a day. Hooray, company!

We met another thru-hiker, Adam, at the Riverbank. He is a triple-crowner (meaning he has hiked the 3 long trails in the U.S. - the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail), so he's moving fast and light. We traded some stories, food tips, and impressions of the trail so far. We agreed that finding camping spots has been a bit of a challenge, with all the towns and private land we've gone by. Adam was also less excited about the frequency of civilization on the trail so far - it sounds like he was hoping for more long, remote sections between towns.

While I somewhat agree with him, part of the appeal of this trail for me was the huge variety of areas that we will pass through. I'm expecting to get plenty of wilderness later on the north island, and especially on the south island, and we're enjoying walking through the countryside and meeting lots of people in towns along the way. So far, in a little more than 2 weeks, we've been on the beach, in dense forest, through farmland, up rivers, and down a beautiful coastline. I can't wait to see what else is in store for us!

The next few hundred kilometers sound fairly populated as we continue down the coast, and approach and pass Auckland, so I might change my tune and be sick of towns in two weeks, but for now we are both loving it (with the exception of long road walks without much of a shoulder). Our next town stop is Waipu, in 4 days. We will probably not take a zero day there, to try to catch up a bit after taking it slow for a week, but I will try to post an update from there.