I took a local bus from Hamilton to Whatawhata and started road walking to the Pirongia Forest. I wanted to make it to the top before the next storm system came through so maybe I could take some sunset shots or maybe even stars, but it’s 30km and almost 1k meters of gain, which is […]
Dave gave me a list into Auckland on his way to work, I sorted my bounce box, then grabbed a bus to Hamilton. It was a nasty rainy morning, a good day to be on a bus. When I arrived I spent some time researching where to go next. I met a guy at the […]
Forced to take a zero because the post office isn’t open on Sundays. I spent the day with Dave and Alison, we ran some errands, some of theirs and some of mine. Icebreaker actually replaced my socks that got a hole in them for free! I also picked up another pair for a total of […]
Reports of the estuary crossing from Stillwater said at low tide it could be neck deep, also low tide was at 4:30 am or 5 pm. Also the high tide bypass track was closed because of kauri dieback disease. So we walked the trail along the estuary up to the closed trail begins, then aimed […]
From Puhoi a group of nine of us rented kayaks and paddled down the river to the coast. It wasn’t a long kayak, it only took about an hour and a half. The views were mixed, but the good ones were really good, some of rolling hills and some of the highway, the alternative is […]
When we woke up it was raining like we expected. The rest of the trail to Puhoi sounded downhill and potentially muddy with the rain, so instead of hiking back up to the trail we waited for the rain to pass, ate a huge breakfast at the cafe, hiked to Warkworth for resupply (which brings […]
The track coming down from Omaha forest wasn’t quite as muddy as the track going up, which I was thankful for. I slipped a couple times, but only fell on my ass once. I figured if I could make it 45 km to the next town (Puhoi) I could take a zero (day with no […]
The weather forecast looked really unclear, I checked three sources and they all said different things. Just before we left it started pouring, then cleared up again. That’s basically how the whole day went, poring rain then sun, then more rain, then sun again. After an uneventful road walk we got to the beach and […]
The forecast looked terrible, but the sun was shining when we packed up at 7. The holiday park in Waipu Cove is a little off the trail, so we had to hike north a bit to rejoin the trail. I realized there was a trail to the south that connects to the Te Araroa, so […]
Took a quick water taxi across Whangarei Harbour then started hiking south 16 km on the beach. Forecast was questionable, mixed rain and sun, but it ended up much better than we expected. We tried to take a shortcut across a river, but that didn’t work, so we had to hike up stream a little […]