21th Oct. Te Araroa 20
6:30 start, no breakfast with the goal to push ahead and make it to Taurikura to arrive at the water edge for a lift to the other side of the bay.
Eunhwa counted a minimum of 1,200 steps down to the foot of the hill. There we passed farmland with cattle and Eunhwa got a fright from one of these cattle as it came up behind her and nudge her backpack.
Cleaning my boots once I exited the forest to prevent kauri dieback. a disease that kills forest trees
Rested at the toilet block and refilled our water bottles and carried on, then I had to return to retrieve my walking sticks that i left behind, and here I was saying that I always checked before leaving for items laying about.
Letterbox
Others TA hikers walked with us, so there was five in total which makes the boat trip cheaper to cross the other side.
Timing was perfect, due to advanced texting of our progress, the boat operator was just pulling out his boat from the boat shed with the tractor and in no time at all, we were in and heading to the other side with a side trip looking at a couple of seals on an island of rocks.
Last shopping for supplies was back in Kerikeri, 10 days ago and our supplies were getting low. This time we plan to approach our shopping technique a little different, we purchased too much last time and I felt it in particularly on the hills climbs were I was much slower and lacked energy. So this time we use the shopping basket and instead of a shopping trolley, the thinking behind this is that we would instantly feel the weight in the basket rather than pushing a big basket on wheels.
Shopping can be difficult, for example should we pay 10 dollars for a kg of cheese or pay 5 dollars for 250grams of cheese. Done both but purchasing the latter we tend to run out very quickly. But its all about weight and getting the balance between comfortable traveling and the bear basics.
Beach walking wasn’t an option for us due to sore feet, so we walked along the road where we meet an elderly lady of 88 who walked with us for a while, we were luckily as she showed us a path that ran along not far from the beach and not long after walking on this track and just past a golf course we setup camp for the night at 4:30pm just 7km short from our goal of Waipu, but it was a long hard day and we were happy to rest and relax early.
