Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Hiking adventures in New Zealand
We started the day with bacon and eggs then Mary dropped us to the start of the Lang's View track stretch of Te Araroa trail. Markus had a rest day due to injury, so we left the majority of our pack items with him (slackpackers!) and just the ladies began the walk.
Today's trail gave us some variety again, starting with forests and with some great views over yesterday's beach walk. This turned into gravel track, road, fields,...
We got up and out a little later today. Te Araroa trail started with an easy 4km road walk to Reotahi Bay. We met Duncan there, who ferried us across the Whangerei Harbour. After a short but choppy ride which included a bit of a soaking ;-) we landed at Marsden Point refinery.
We became thoroughly confused at this point. There was no Te Araroa signage, so we followed the Guthook TA Hiker app through the plant to the final gate, where we...
We were up at 5.30am today. Ros from Tidesong BnB made us a wonderful early brekkie of pikelets with crab apple jam and golden syrup plus cereal, toast and eggs. It was a perfect start to the morning!
Hugh gave Anja, Markus, Anouck and I a lift to the Kauri Mountain track trail head and we began our first climb of the day, to 245m elevation in a beautiful forest trail.
There were great views from the summit of...
Today Anouck and I woke up to fresh eggs, gifted to us by James our host at the Nikau Eco camp.
Bruce and Anja and Markus joined us for morning coffee, then James offered us a lift to the start of the Mackerel Forest track, today's first stretch on Te Araroa trail, which we gratefuly accepted.
We started with a little river crossing - which we took our shoes off for, and walked the grassy path barefoot to...
I had one of the best sleep of the trail last night :-) Bruce woke Anouck and I up at 8am & we were delighted to be invited to a family breakfast with Bruce's friends Joe, Michelle, Manea and Vinnie who had arrived the night before and were to walk a stretch of Te Araroa trail with us today.
We set off around 9.15am with a much lighter load - as Michelle went ahead in the car to meet us further down the trail. You cant...
As you can imagine today was a very slow start, and without a doubt my worst morning on Te Araroa trail. I woke several times during the night and drank as much water as I could, and this morning I was starving!
After breakfast we slowly plodded along an incerdibly beautiful 7km coastal track then onto a road to Moureeses Bay where we called in on Bruce's friends Craig and Karen.
They gave us refreshments of water, chocolate...