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.
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.
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