Te Araroa Trail Whanganui to Bulls
Anja, Marcus and I said goodbye to the YHA Whanganui around 8.15am today and walked around the river to the Saturday morning market. Anouck headed off to do a side-trip to Mount Taranaki.
Someone told us that the food selections at the market would be yummy! They didn’t disappoint. I opted for a 2nd brekfast of a bacon and egg bap, and took a freshly baked ham roll, and apple pastry for later 🙂
Super-hitch!
Today’s walk began on the state highway out of Whanganui, which makes for awful walking. There was no shoulder, let alone pavement or path to the side. We stuck out a thumb.
We were offered some advice re. a better place to hitch from by a local, who we then got talking to. He then offered to drop us to the better hitching spot. Once there he drove us the 25kms or so along the state highway, plus the additional road walk to Koitiata and Turakina beach (saving us most of a day’s walk). This was 25kms completely out of his way. Thanks Ken – you’re a very good man!
Beautiful Beach Walk
The first part of today was 8kms of Turakina beach. It was a black sand beach littered with driftwood, making it quite other-worldy in parts, and very beautiful. We lunched in the Standof forest at a turnoff from the beach.
After this was a short forestry road, then 20kms of road walk in the sun again.
Bulls
Bulls is one of those unassuming little Kiwi towns, named after one of it’s earliest European settlers. In recent times, it has reinvented itself based completely around ‘bull’ puns. Its actually worth visiting just marvel at how many unbelieva-bull jokes this town can make!
I got to Bulls around 5pm, met Anja and Markus (who had hitched a lift a little earlier) and we walked to the Bulls Motel and Holiday Park a little further out of town. We had a swim in the tiny pool to cool us down.
Today marked the end of the Whanganui region, and very lovely it’s been too. We’re now in the Manawatu!
