20th Oct, Te Araroa 19
Ocean Beach
We started our 9km walk on the Ocean Beach with little water between us, day was hot with high tide pushing us up onto the soft sand. We should have filled up just before we left the forest track where there was a stream just before entering farmland, but on this occasion I guess we were to busy talking and didn’t give it a second thought.
View from our tent at the edge of Taiharuru River, after the crossing yesterday .
Walking on the beach brings back memories of the challengers of the 90mile beach and in the short walk we did on the beach Eunhwa was already feeling the blisters starting to develop on her feet due to her wet socks, my feet stayed dry because I had leather boots and Eunhwa’s were cloth material.
The big climbs today were Te Whara and Mt Lion at the end of Ocean Beach, some TA hikers we notice would by pass this and walk along the road where it was flat and save them a days hard work, but we decided to climb the 450m and walk along its ridge which gave us breathtaking views along the way.
We knew we wouldn’t make it all the way that day and so at about the halfway point, we found ourselves a spot to camp that was on the edge of the track due to very limited space.
My gas cooker started to play up, then the plumb to pressure rise the fuel container stopped working. I didn’t know how to pull the pump apart and thank fully the cooker came with basic tools and I used utube to research a way to fix the pump. Under the cover of darkness with my head lamp flashing to indelicate that the batteries were getting flat, I managed to find the problem which required some lubricant inside the pump and in half and hour it was back in action. I must remember to get myself an Annual service kit for the cooker, I’ve had it for a number of years so far and its the first problem I’ve had so far.
