Ngunguru to Ruakaka Trail day 15-18

November 27th: Whananaki Coastal Walk to Ngunguru Connection

We started the morning with a ramen breakfast; Tracy the owner of the Holiday Park was nice enough to give us a couple of eggs to use in our breakfast. Since being in New Zealand most of our food has been either fried or in meat pie form. Very little veggi's. To make up for it we bought a large bag of frozen veggi's and split it between our frozen pizza last night and the ramen in the morning. Hopefully it'll count for something.

We walked across an absurdly long bridge to cross an estuary. The bridge had been there since the 50's and was built for the children if that small town to get to the school on the other side. Before the bridge was built the Principle used row the school children in a boat across the waterway. The tide really affects how high or low the estuary is so rowing might have been very difficult back then.

Otherwise today was a very beautiful easy day. The weather was good and the views from the coastal walk were stunning. For lunch we ate fish and chips and ice cream for in Matapouri and had take out again for dinner. I know spoiled. Interesting fact about their burgers, they like to put beats and carrots on them in addition to lettuce. It's actually tastier than tomatoes so I'm definitely going to carry the practice over back in the states.

That night we stayed at the Riverbank B&B - technically we stayed in their garden. Melba and Hilton are TA trail angels and allow trappers to stay in their garden in exchange for "koa" or gift. We had tea and wonderful conversation with Melba in the evening. She was kind enough to save us some rhubarb crumble that she had made. In the morning she also packed us each a snack bag with chocolates and oat bars. Good thing we have trail Mom's to take care of us!

November 28th: Ngunguru connection to Pataua North Connection

Rain today.
We were hit with a cold front that broke our heat streak which was both good and bad. Hilton saved us a 15 km road walk and gave us a ride to the trailhead early. The generosity of the people here is just astounding and continues to amaze me. Melba and Hilton really took care of us.

It started raining as soon as we exited the car. Luckily it didn't continue all day. NZ weather is very temperamental; we often have three seasons worth of weather crammed into one day.

Today we wrapped things up a little early since our hitch allowed us to get to a convenient campsite earlier than expected. So we finished the day by drying out our gear and having a celebratory meal of mashed potatoes and sausage for Thanksgiving.( We are a day ahead in NZ) We didn't get the chance to eat turkey today but there were plenty out on the trail. They must know they're safe here.

November 29th:

Today was all about kicking butt...say we weren't the ones doing the kicking. The first half of the day was spent slogging through sand. Pretty views though made up for it.

The second half of the day was all about going up. New Zealand does not believe in switch backs and today we were to walk from the beach up to a mountain range then hike the ridgeline. We felt like we were on the stair master ride from hell. And no one was aloud to get off.

Still magnificent views though.

November 30th: Peach Cove to Ruakaka

It was the day of trail magic.

For those that aren't familiar with hiker lingo; trail magic is something that happens that is unexpected and good to java happen while on the trail. Usually another third party is involved.

We definitely had the magic going for us today. Yesterday was fairly challenging since we had to slog through soft sand for half the day; then climb the stair master for the other half.

I started out my day climbing up to the tippy top to retrieve my sunglasses. Then after that little escapade our day finally got started.

After the roller coaster of Ridgeline we exited down into the small beach town and immediately hitched a ride to the general store.

We were starving and had just run out of snack food. We got another relatively easy hitch back to where the boats were docked. No sooner has we gotten out of the car and a speed boat pulled in. A very nice kiwi couple gave us a hitch across the bay; normally it's an 80$ charge to get a taxi to the other side of the bay but this couple wanted to show us some kiwi hospitality. They wouldn't even take our gas money.

As soon as they dropped us off anther kiwi who was fishing with his children offered us a ride to the super market. What luck! Then after the supermarket we immediately got a lift to our camp ground. Finally the grounds keeper gave us a discount on the room.

Trail magic! It was an awesome day.

Paihia to Ngunguru Trail day 12-15

November 23rd: Paihia to Kerikeri

It's backwards day!

We skipped a section of trail from KeriKeri further down the trail so that we could have a zero day in Paihia. Zero days are days off from trail life and we had an awesome zero day in a Paihia doing laundry and catching up on the blog. Today was Sunday and we decided to hike back up to Kerikeri so that we could retrieve our bounce box (a box of extra stuff that we bounce along from different post offices along the trail.) We walked 25 km through a maze of old logging roads. It was the first day that had us sweating! Since coming here we've had a lot of cold, windy, rainy weather. It was nice to sweat a bit. We splurged again and stayed in a room at the Holiday Park in Kerikeri- there isn't that much of a price difference between camping and a room so we stayed in a room for security purposes so that we could shop without worrying about our packs. Next we re supplied at the grocery store....never go into a store as a hungry hiker. We ended up buying too much food. Guess we'll just have to eat it all.

November 24th: Paihia to Russell Forest Track

We met up with 2 TA hikers today- Gill from Israel who we had met before, and a new guy David from Houston Texas.

We've now met two NorCal guys and one Texan. Seems funny that we should meet people from those two states considering that I'm a native Californian and Cody is Texan born and raised.
We left our hiker comrades behind in KeriKeri and had an easy hitch back to Paihia where we stopped for one last time at our favorite icecream shop. Cody got one scoop of passion fruit and I got 2 scoops of Ferrero Roche. The tummy ache later on told me that I had overdone it.

From there we took the coastal walkway which was breathtakingly gorgeous.

Then a 1$ ferry ride to Otaki (NZ's first capital, not its current one)

We opted for the dollar ferry ride and an extra 20 km road walk rather than a 100$ boat ride that would have taken us right to the trail. Luckily we got a hitch for part of the road walk. While walking up to the trail a few small boys warned us too lookout for the half goat man that lurks in the forest. We asked if his name was Sasquatch; to which they had no reply since they had never heard of bigfoot. Keeping an eye out for goat tracks tonight. So far we've only seen horse prints, good thing those kids didn't mention anything about centaurs.

November 25th: Russell Forest Track to Morepork - Onekainga Track

Well it was another hot day, our sticky sweat was starting to really get to us. Before today I'd say we hadn't really acquired our hiker funk yet. But now it was finally getting started.
We took up most of the morning walking up a river (literally no trail just ankle deep river) and saw two eels each about 2 feet long.  One of them even let us get close enough to take a photo.

We were set to do about 30 km (18 ish mi) 17 of which we walked, and 13 we hitched because very narrow, windy, mountain roads suck to walk on. For those of you who know what Topanga Canyon road looks like it's very similar. There is no shoulder for walkers and the cars are going way too fast. With an added bonus of half of the drivers on these roads that drink and drive. I'm not sure if it's legal here but there certainly aren't enough police to monitor that. Driving while under the influence really does seem to be quite a problem here.
Our hitch for that day ended up missing our turn and taking us about 1/2 an hour past our destination. Luckily he brought us right back to where we needed to be. Lesson learned, always have the GPS handy and don't trust the Kiwis to know where anything is.
We finally made it to the Onekainga track- we named it the Fly Kingdom Track. NZ has a pest control problem with the non native possums from Australia. Their way of solving it is to invent as many ways as possible to kill them. In Russell forest track they laid small foot traps (like mini bear traps) which had us on high alert since they liked to put them right next to the trail-perfect for clamping on a trail shoe. We saw maybe 5 dead possums that were about a week old.

In Onekainga we saw probably over a hundred traps (poison and box traps) all next to or on the trail. The ammount of dead possums was unnerving but it was nothing compared to the ammount of flies on the trail. Hence the name...Fly Kingdom.

November 26th: Onekainga track to Whananki

We took a Nero day in Whananaki having only hiked 8 km (5 mi) which took us 3 hours to do because most of it was an extremely hilly cow path. Still have not seen a proper switchback yet. We both miss them! Going straight up and down muddy, overgrown hills is very slow and tedious.

We had our first Killer cow experience. Cody and I had read in blogs of how people were being chased by wild NZ cows. We thought this was all very silly. Then we came across a section of trail that put us in a paddock with 40 you'd steers. They made a very fun game out of false charging us. Luckily they thought we were scarier when we charged back. Silly cows.

We got to the Holiday Park at noon and decided to bunk down. There we met Mathew and Tracy two wonderful people from South Africa who run the Holiday park. They have a very nice garden with veggi's/fruits and encourage patrons to take what they want. They are also very TA hiker friendly and offer discounted rates and free showers-which we desperately needed.  We stayed in the Naki'd cabin. Naki is short for Whananaki which is the town we were staying in.  And to be Nicker'd was slang for tired...Not naked like how I presumed. Guess we'll have to keep our clothes on and go to sleep.

That evening we scored two honey crepes made by a french couple Helen and Kevin who were working at the Holiday park. The crepes were delicious! The couple were on a working Holiday and planned to be in NZ for 8 months. After talking with them both Cody and I felt people from the States could use a lesson on how to vacation.

Tomorrow we'll be walking 27 km to Ngunguru- quite the mouthful to say and spell.

Ahipara to Paihia:Trail day 6-11

November 16th and 17th: Herekino forest track

We woke up that morning to intermittent heavy rain-typical, it must have known we were going to be starting a monster track. Both Herekino and Reatea the two tracks coming up had a reputation for massive suck factor. Down trees, steep hills, and mud awaited us. Bring on the rain NZ, we can take it. We did leave a bit later than what we should have (11am). Waiting between rain storms and taking our time in the warm kitchen eating eggs and boild potatoes (new favorite hearty breakfast) didn't help us get out the door in a timely manor. Still we got out there, and the suck factor surpassed our expectations.

Yes it was beautiful, and being in a semi tropical rainforest did have a cool appeal to it. But when I imagined hiking through the jungle I envisioned a hot meander through dense vegetation with lots of wildlife. In reality we slogged through shin deep mud, on a "track" that more closely resembled a game trail. And I've never missed switchbacks so much in my life! This trail went straight up the mountain and straight down. Most of the "hike" was controlled skating and clamoring to grab ahold of any plant to stabilize our graceful decent. We did not see any wildlife but that was ok since the trees made up for it.

This is where we first saw a Kauri tree. The Kauri are prehistoric giants, thousands of years old and larger than school buses in some cases. Before people came to the Island there used to be many Kauri, but most of them got turned into boat material and large tables- seriously we've seen a lot of fancy tables made out of Kauri. Weird.
Anyways it took us two 1/2 days to get out of the mud pile since the first day was started late and the second day was only half spent in the forest. All I can say is, I've never been happier to see a beautiful, dry, dirt road. I could have kissed it.

Cody and I had heard a story about a hiker that had gone through the forest and had such a rough time that he fell and broke his trekking poles. Well the story was true and we found one. Cody made a shrine out of it with a possum skull.

November 18th: Road walk to Reatea Forest

The road walk was largely uneventful apart from a finding that a TA marker was pointed in the wrong direction. We went a ways before I consulted the GPS- then turned back around up the hill to find a pair of hikers with a map out at that exact junction. They informed us it was pointed the wrong way, which we had just found out...the hard way. After introductions we discovered we had a celebrity encounter.

Mina Holder from the UK is attempting to be the first female to thru run the whole TA (1800 miles) in 80 days. Follow her at Run NZ on facebook. We had run into her and one of her support crew Adam. Both were very nice down to earth people. They ran off after the conversation and we plodded doggedly along, with heavy packs and clumsy walking sticks. Before leaving Cody did fix the marker that was pointed the wrong way.

We continued down the road making our way to Reatea Forest where we'd find a place to camp at the start of the trail. It was about 7:30 pm when we decided to look for a place to stop. Walking past a run down shack with trash and broken cars in front we decided this was the spot to filter water. Bad idea...
Here is where we had our first mountain hippy encounter. A dirty, emaciated red bearded youth came out to great us. His clothes were torn and his fingernails had grown creepy long and we're very dirty. The guy could hardly string a sentence together but he did make clear that he could offer us a place to stay for some cash to get his "camping facility" up and running. The "camp ground" was piled up with trash and old cars. Cody gave him a couple bucks hoping he'd buzz off but unfortunately he didn't take the hint. Another skinny old hippy joined us as we were filtering water, this one had dreadlocks and walked with a staff. Cody asked what they did for fun, since it wasn't clear how they were successfully surviving way out in the remote mountains of Reatea. The older one replied "well I'm about to take a bath in my WW2 bathtub, that's fun." That was enough to send us further up the road in search of a cleaner, less creepy campsite. We found one closer to the trail and far away from any dirty hippies.

November 19th: Reatea Forest

Welcome to hell.

I'll spare you most of the details and just touch on the highlights of the day. Tons of down trees which were difficult to get around especially for Cody who wears two full knee braces. The trail was pretty much all mud and has some of the highest peaks in the north Island. When Kiwis decide to make the trail go up it goes straight up. And of course it will bring you straight down in a hurry too. Not good when the trail is overgrown, obviously never maintained, and is 97% mud/ bog. We were in up to our knees in some parts. Luckily we could still make out Mina and Adams footprints sliding around the track and it was reashering that someone else had alreafy made it tgrough successfully. It was a very long day that did eventually end at 8:30pm. We moved about a kilometer an hour through the forest (.621 of a mile) I had a bad slip and slid a ways down a hill; luckily a sharp branch broke my fall. Dont worry, it did not break the skin but I did get a pretty nasty bruise from it. We were both very happy to be done with Reatea.

No we did not wright "I hate Raetea"

While exiting the farm at the base of the forest we ran into one of the trail makers. Robert on his horse when we stopped him, he had been making his rounds about the mountain checking his possum traps. A burlap sack strung to his saddle was proof of his profession and the days good catch.

He told us that possums had come from Australia and that they were taking over NZ. Which is surprising because their numbers are low in OZ. Anyways possum hunting is encouraged and apparently profitable. So Robert and his 28 year old horse spend most of the year trapping possums which then get turned into hats and jackets. Their fur actually is quite nice, and if you look up the Australian possum you'll find that unlike American possums they are actually really cute. Aside from Roberts possum hunting he had volunteered to help make the Reatea trail. I didn't want to say this but it could use some touching up, and a few switchbacks too.

November 20th: Jacksons wet weather bypass

We hiked a short bit to get into town where we were promised a small store for resupply. The two had a very nice little Maori radio station and the DJ (his name was G) took us in and let us listen while he was working. We'd herd only American Music since coming to NZ so it was refreshing to here some local music. In this case it was Kiwi reggae. G told us that some bad weather could possible come in by the next day so we decided to take the Jackson wet weather bypass instead of the forest track coming up. G offered to give us a lift through the bypass and both of us gratefully took him up. Wanting to get to Kerikeri (the next big town) before bad weather.
Keeping to the trend, G drove like a kiwi up the dirt road to the Puketi DOC campground. When Cody asked him if he was ever a rally car racer G responded with yanking the E brake in a sliding skid across the dirt road. We had a lot of fun with him. Very cool guy who knew a lot about the culture and history of the Maori people.

The campground in Puketi forest was beautiful, and had more Kauri trees! We also met up with Mina the trail runner again and had a nice long chat over tea. We traded trail stories about what we'd seen and experienced separately on the trail. That might we had our first possum encounter, which was more cute than annoying. The little thing first tried very hard to sneak up on us but we could hear it Russell ing around the trees and falling or landing heavily with and occasional thump. It finally got up the guts to creep up to the pots which were just outside the tent door when Cody told it firmly "no!" A couple of times then it finally went away. I found that the possum cuteness factor outweighed it's annoying antics to get our food.

November 21st: hiking to Kerikeri

We hiked onto KeriKeri which was

promised to be a largeish town where we could get a proper resupply for food. The original plan was to stay in KeriKeri Kerikeri that night and take a zero day to give our knees a break yes even mine were hurting. Mina the runner also suffered knee trouble after the Reatea stretch. Both Cody and I are YHA members which gives us a special discount for those hostels. Kerikeri didn't have any, but its prettier neighboring beach town did so we decided to hitch down and take a zero day there (in Piahia) to stay at the YHA for 2 nights. Spoiled I know.

November 22nd: zero day

Welcome to the Germans party zone. Cody and I didn't get much sleep the previous night because our hostel was overrun with partying Germans on holiday. It seems like every hostel we have come to has been overun. And what is with Germans and techno? They blasted terrible music till about midnight. Then the cops came to arrest some drunk people singing loudly in the streets. Then at 2 am some Kiwis decided our window was the perfect place to stand next to for a very loud drunken chat. Finally Cody and I did get some sleep despite the Germans.
Our zero day in Paihia was nice, we planned the next leg of our journey, charged batteries, did laundry, watched an ocean swim competition, ate A LOT, and enjoyed beautiful rainbow filled sunsets on the beach.

 All in all a very nice day. Now if only those Germans could let me go to sleep. Who's bright idea was it to give them fireworks anyways?

Cape Reinga to Ahipara: Trail day 1-5

November 12th:
Despite arriving at 5pm at Cape Reinga we decided that we would pursue the trail and see how far we could get that day. We had also heard there was going to be some bad weather the whole weekend but that wasn't going to stop us...5 km (3 miles) later we were forced to stop. Bad weather had rolled in and we were losing our daylight fast. We decided to make camp before the weather turned nasty and sheltered from the weather in a nook of a large hill. Unfortunately the wind and rain started curving around in powerful gusts and funneled to our tent site. The tent blew over twice in the middle of us eating dinner. Cody found us a new place that was our last and best option. We setup in a hollow sandy depression in a hill that was sheltered by small mountains on two sides. The waves were deafening, and the storm continued to roll through increasing every hour. Our little tent stakes were ripped from the sand with each surge and we're flung in different directions. The tent came down 4 times that night until we finally gave up let it drape over us like a bivy sack. Luckily it held up against the gusts of rain, we didn't sleep that night but at least everything stayed dry.

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November 13th:
We packed up at 5:30 and headed up the hill between storms. The wind was almost knocking us over in certain parts, and made travel slow. We saw several trail marker posts that had blown down from the wind. While making our way to 90 mile beach, and met a southbounder (craig) and his dog (didn't catch the name). They weren't strictly doing the Te Araroa but had hiked parts of it and thru hiked both Islands during the winter. Talk about tough! We met them on their last day on the trail. Craig offered us a place to stay whenever we're around his part of town-nice guy. Later on that day we got some hail in addition to the wind and rain. I was determined that we camp out of the wind so we headed into the forest for shelter. We found a nice little spot that reminded me of a brothers grim story. A very old, creaky Grove of pine trees provided great protection from the wind. We slept well that night, too well.

Side note: It was my Mom's 50th birthday in US time (NZ is a day ahead) and I had a lot of fun imagining the great time she was having at the spa resort my Dad sent her to. I hope you had a wonderful birthday Mom.

November 14th
My watch fell off and Cody rolled on top of it so neither of us heard the alarm. We woke up at 11 am. Trail slackers I know! We didn't officially get started till 1:30; plowing our way out of the jungle took some time to get back onto the beach.
By the way 60 miles of beach walking is not the cake walk that it would seem. Imagine being in a wind tunnel that blasts you with sand and rain...that never once let's up.
We met our first aurora hikers that day as well, two NorCal dudes (Brian and Jason)and one man from Israel named Gill.
We got to Huckatere lodge that night at 9pm (just at dark) luckily we received the warmest greeting frim the owner Gabrielle and her manager Ngaru. They made us hot tea and fed us biscuts while entertaining us with Maori stories about the land. Apparently the northern island of New Zealand is considered to be the fish. The southern island is the canoe that that Maori people sailed on. Both of those ladies were wonderful to chat with, they also gave us some farm fresh eggs for our morning breakfast. We stayed in a very comfortable bunkroom that night away from the wind and sand and slept very well.

November 15th &16th:
We pushed on to Ahipara which would signify the end of our long beach treck. Part of it we took a beach road that Gabrielle had mentioned we could use for about 12km. It was a nice change of pace and kept us out of the wind.
We finally showed up at Ahipara around 5 pm and immediately got a hitch to Kaitia (a larger town) for groceries for our next stretch.
We ended our day at the YHA hostel in Ahipara, which is exceptionally beautifull. Lots of singing birds and cattle on the property. Cody and stayed in a private Cabin. We used our Low Carbon traveler discount which worked out very well.

Fun fact: Cody and I made a game out of counting dead birds and puffer fish we came across on the beach. I won, 21 dead birds and only 8 puffer fish. The bad weather brought in all kinds of strange sea life, but birds and puffer fish were all we could name.

Auckland to Cape Reinga

November 10th:
We took a bus from Auckland to Paihia (Bay of Islands) intending to hitch from Paihia to Cape Reinga (the start of the trail) as soon as we were dropped off. What we hadn't planned on was the bus arriving an hour late; or Paihia being so beautiful. So when we arrived at 6pm we decided to make camp for the night, and paid a bit too much for a campsite at the Holiday Park (prices are fairly steep everywhere) That evening we had a lovely basket of fried fish and some very tasty New Zealand icecream. The man serving us talked with us for over an hour; as the conversation came to a close we asked about payment for the icecream... Turned out he didn't actually work there, no wonder he was giving us large samples of every flavor. We did pay for our dessert in the end, and it turned out our new friend knew the owner of the sweet shop and was just hanging around pretending to serve icecream.

November 11th:
Within the first 20 minutes of sticking my thumb out (Cody showing a little leg) we had our first ride. Thank you Simon for popping our hitching cherry. We hadn't realized just how far the distance from Paihia to Cape Reinga was so 6 hitches later we finally made it to Cape Reinga, a special thank you to our last hitch Owen who also walked with us to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga and joined us for our first steps on the Te Araroa trail. Also thank you to everyone that gave us a ride, New Zealand is full of many kind people.

Kiwi observation: I've come to the conclusion that Kiwi's would make excellent race car drivers. Everybody drives fast; and most of the roads here are windy mountain roads that require a bit of skill.

Sending out gear and food along the Te Araroa

Here's a look at most of our gear we will be using during the hike. We traveled to New Zealand with about 100 pounds of gear and food between us. That worked out well because our airline (Fiji Airways) allowed each of us to fly with one 50 pound or less

          Bars/dehydrated meals tha I will be taking

Gear

Electronics

 Trail Food 

Boxed up