Exiting Raetea Forest and Maunga Taniwha Range
11th Oct
Much warmer this morning, easy start at 7:20am. Walked down through the farm, past the farm house with the barking dogs and onto the national highway were we walked until Mangamuka, milk and bread and peanut butter for breakfast or maybe lunch.On the way to Mangamuka we meet the elderly couple but this time they were on bicycles, lucky for them they have a support crew and they decided to avoid the rough mountain and cycle around it instead.
We are sitting outside the shop at the moment and a couple from Canterbury up here looking for a farm to buy and told us there was a big article into newspapers about the Te Araroa tracks and it mentioned the great meat pies at the shop at Mangamlka.
Camped midway in the stream that night, the section was 3.1km’s of crossing the river side to side with no other place to walk only inside the river. We judged our time very poorly and really should have left this section for the next day, but with plenty of energy we marched on. It got dark quickly and the large hills on each side of us provided little ground to camp. After some time, I knew we wouldn’t make it out of the river before night full and when the opportunity came in the form of a perfect camp site, we immediately took it.
Where we called home for the night was a raised section of about a meter and a half above the river and there was enough room for a single tent only which had been used in the past by other campers. It had soft grass and moss that made the evening very pleasant with the sound of the river. We fell asleep soon after we had our meal for the night with darkness came to us at 7:45pm with no fear of a flash flood as warned in our note due to its elevated position.
