Days 20-22: Ocean Beach, Bream Head, Waipu

Wow, what a packed few days we've had! We covered some serious ground and have come 90 kms in 2.5 days (although we didn't actually walk quite that many - read on). We also had some amazing views, a great campsite, and a 60th birthday party! We've come about 425 total kms so far, and have probably about a week to go before we hit Auckland.


We left the Riverbank Homestay early on day 20, with a long day of road walking ahead of us. We had 12 kms of road, then 4 kms on logging roads through a forest, then another 13 kms on the road. We also weren't sure where we'd be camping at the end of all that - we knew there was a holiday park in the area, but had resolved to stop paying $40 to get a flat spot on a lawn in the middle of 20 camper vans every night. All that, combined with how great our stay at Riverbank was, made us not so excited to leave the B&B, but we still managed to get packed up and moving on the early side.

We hammered out the kms on the road - the first 10 were the worst, going down a 100 km/hr road with a good amount of traffic and a small shoulder, but after that we ended up on less busy roads. We arrived in Pataua North, at another footbridge (not quite as long or rickety as the last one) in the middle of the afternoon. We still had plenty of daylight left, but had planned to camp here because we had to walk across an estuary just after town, which could only be done at low tide. The next low tides were at around midnight and noon the next day. We briefly contemplated a romantic moonlight estuary stroll, but decided packing up the tent and then setting it back up in the dark wasn't worth it.


Another lovely footbridge

Luckily, the trail notes listed a few local places that would shuttle across the estuary at high tide. We took out the phone and called, and Tidesong B&B offered to take us for $10 per person. I failed as a negotiator here - when I asked how much it would be on the phone, she seemed surprised and said "Uhh, how about 10 per person?" I think they would have done it for free if I hadn't asked, although we would have offered some money for their time anyway.

David, a caretaker for the B&B, came to pick us up. This was our first bit of cheating on the trail - we skipped 2 kms in the car - but it seemed worth it to save half a day of waiting around for the tide. On the way to the B&B, David mentioned he had seen a couple of other people camped on the side of the road - we knew immediately that it had to be James and Michelle. Or, as we've started to call them, "The Brits". They left the Riverbank about an hour before us that morning, and we hadn't seen them all day.

David was nice enough to pull over and let us say hi, and we managed to convince them (without much trouble) to join us on the dinghy ride and push on to Ocean Beach (very original name for a beach) that day. They broke down their half assembled camp site in record time, and jumped in the car with us. We ended up travelling the 1/2 km across the estuary in two boats - a rowboat with David and James, and another small boat towed by the rowboat. In real life, James is a rowing coach, but I didn't hear him giving David any advice on the way across.


James and Michelle, loading the boats

Rowing across

From the other side of the estuary, it was about 6 km over to the start of Ocean Beach, where we expected to find a good campsite. The only catch was that we had to go over a (small) mountain to get there. Luckily, the views back north along the coast made this totally worth it.


Sunbeams on the New Zealand countryside... hard to take a bad picture


I guess this view is ok

We got to the top, and were happy to find steps down the other side. We reached the beach around 7:30, after 2 kms of road walking, and found our best campsite of the trip so far.


Definitely worth the long day!


Great light at sunset

We ate dinner and the passed out immediately after 35.5 kms of walking - easily our longest day yet.

The next day, we headed down Ocean Beach toward Bream Head, a 400m tall mountain range at the bottom of the peninsula to the east of Whangarei Harbor. I had been looking forward to this section for days - the views from the top seemed like they would be spectacular. It was a long, steep, very hot climb to the top, but we were rewarded with an amazing lunch spot, and what Liz and I agree is our favorite spot in the trail so far.


View to the south


Looking back over the peninsula

After lunch we continued on for some more ups and downs. It was quite a hot day, and we ended up running out of water about 2 kms before the end. Fortunately there were a good number of steps built in the trail, which helped with some of the steep sections. There were also some great views of Marsden Point and Smugglers Cove on the way down.


Marsden Point on the way down

At the bottom, we found a conveniently located set of toilets and water spigots, and probably drank a liter of water each from them. Our next challenge was to find a way across Whangarei Harbor to Marsden Point. The trail notes suggested that we just hang out at a boat ramp and ask fishermen to drop us off on the other side. Given kiwi hospitality so far, we thought this just might work.

Then we met our first unfriendly kiwi! We asked a guy launching a boat if he could drop us on the other side. After explaining the trail and where we were headed, he said "So you just showed up here without arranging anything and expect to get a ride across from someone?" To which we responded "Uhh, yeah. Thanks anyway!" We had much better luck with our second attempt, and got a ride across with a super friendly Maori and his wife that were headed out for some fishing. So we and the Brits loaded into the boat, and ten minutes later we were on the other side, and about two days ahead of our conservative guess of how far we'd get in two days from Ngunguru.

We continued down the beach, hoping to reach a DoC campsite for the night. Unfortunately, we hit a snag when we reached the mouth of the Ruakaka River along the beach. It is supposedly crossable at low tide, but we hit it just before high tide. We walked up it a bit, hoping to find a wadable section, but ended up giving up and sitting in the bank trying to figure out what our next move was.

And, cue another awesome Kiwi to the rescue. Simon, who runs Ruakaka Kayaking, saw us stranded in the bank, and came over in his dinghy to rescue us!


Simon to the rescue (one person at a time)

After rescuing us, he showed us a nice place to set up our tents for the night, then invited us to stop by a 60th birthday party for his friend, Kevin, next to the grassy area where we were camping! So we set up, and went over for a couple of hours to hang out with 10 or so people to celebrate Kevin's 60th. They fed us sausage, mutton, salad, fried bread with lots of butter, and beers. Not a bad way to end the day, and another amazing example of how friendly and welcoming everyone (except that one guy in the harbor) here is.

The next morning, we met Mary and Grace, who are from NZ and are section hiking the TA. They were very friendly and nice, and we walked with them for a few hours until we reached Waipu. There, we had an awesome lunch of meat pies and an "iced coffee" which was more like a coffee milkshake (we weren't complaining) at a shop in town.


If you ever go through Waipu, stop here for a meat pie

We met up with the Brits again in Waipu, and decided to take a short day today and camp at a holiday park in Waipu Cove, a few kms south of Waipu. We had two pretty long days, and haven't had a shower since Kerikeri, so the idea of stopping a bit early and getting clean was too much to resist. Luckily they had wi-fi, so I laboriously typed this post up on the phone. Quite a bit happened in these two and a half days!


Blogging from the campground

This section has been awesome and very scenic. Liz's foot "doesn't hurt any more than the rest of (her) legs," and we seem to have found a good rhythm that has us doing the kms we need to in order to finish on schedule, before it gets too cold in the south island. Things are going really well!

From here, we're going to try to make it 66 kms in 2 days to get to a camping spot at a music venue near Matakana that sounds very friendly to TA hikers. We'll see how that goes :)