Wanganui to Poads road (Tararuas start)

January 9th- 12th Wanganui to Tararuas trailhead

This section comprises some of the dullest part of the trail so I'm going to summarize it instead of going through it day by day. It's roughly a hundred fifteen kilometers of road/beach walking which was brutal on the feet and body to walk on hot asphalt for that length of time.

We had our first experience with black sand on Turakina beach.

 The beach was windy as usual and littered with logs that had been washed down from the Whanganui river. We camped in a forest a few hundred meters from an active logging area across the road. We were woken up quite early with a crash. Even from that distance the sound was deafening, which is good to know that we probably were unlikely to be killed by logging operations since we'd hear that miles before they'd get to us.

Coolest part of the forest trek-hedgehog!

We met Gill along our road walk, both of us were getting a hitch at exactly the same time from two different drivers. At the point that we had hitched there was a lengthy diversion around the only nice Forrest section we could have walked through. Damn logging!

In feilding we camped like homeless people in the park, with the possibility of a $200 fine I'd rather not make it a habit. Apparently freedom camping used to be legal in NZ, but the tourist had a problem with not burying their feces in public parks-ew.

Cody treated me to a movie at the littlest, fanciest theater in Fielding. We saw the Water Diviner which was awesome.

After a lengthy road walk Gill, Cody, and I finally reached Palmerston North. The city was a lot bigger and nicer than I expected it to be. We took a zero day to resupply and then stayed the night at The New Railway Inn. Not to be confused with The Old Railway Inn which was the bar next door. We had a really nice stay and got to catch up with all the other TA hikers in town.

Mr. GQ in his element

Cody gave Joss a replacement frisbee for the one he' d lost during the river trip. While we were at the store buying the frisbee we saw something odd... It was quite weird seeing New Zealand on the center of a world map; especially on a frisbee.

January 13th Palmerston North to the halfway mark.

To get out of Palmerston North we planned on skipping ahead to avoid some of the city and farmland walking that we had grown to really dislike. We missed about 16 kilometers of the TA by going up Scott road out of a tiny town called Linton. On the way up Scott road we saw this sign...hmm.

Our notes had told us the logging operations would be done last year. Either way we were going through so we pressed on. Around 4:30 we started seeing logging employees in trucks coming down the windy road heading towards home. Lucky for us we're going to get there just after quitting time. We finally made it to the logging site around 7 p.m. Cody's eyes lit up as he took in this golden opportunity ...they left all of their logging machines right next to the trail! One of them might have the keys inside. After a thorough search through all of the machines no keys were found. I don't think I've ever seen him more disappointed. But that didn't stop us from climbing all around the diggers and taking a few photographs.

We camped about a kilometer out from the logging site at the halfway mark in the the trail which was fairly nondescript; just a boundary between pine forest and native bush. This wasn't the halfway mark for us, we had planned to celebrate in Wellington which was the end of the North Island. And possibly the only place that we could find Mexican food which we were desperately craving.

Cody made an art out of stealth camping by adorning the tent with many fern leaves.

This was our view of the tent from the road, not as stealthy as we'd thought.

January 14th Halfway mark to Paradise on the Hill B&B.

We left camp and descended into the bush section of the trail which turned out to be a muddy, rooted, goat path typical TA trail standard for the North Island. After a few stream crossings we heard what sounded like a chimpanzee howling in the forest. It was just Gill' our most dedicated stalker coming down the trail. We had a good time catching up while walking through the valley enjoying the view of the mountains around a us. We were quite ecstatic not to be on top of the ridgeline. It was a real treat!

Found this old bottle hidden in a tree

Otherwise the track was mostly uneventful. We ascended some mildly steep stuff that made us huff and puff, but for the most part it was an enjoyable track.

Cody had a cool idea to set up the gravity filter with trekking poles since there were no trees around.

Gil stopped before us on the track to setup camp and cuddle up with some sheep. We decided to continue onto Paradise on Hillside B&B. With a name like that how could we pass it up? We were also running low on food and I'd hoped to buy some bread from the lady running to the B&B instead of having to take a day off to hitch to the nearest town. As it turns out Stephany the owner of the b&b was a very warm and welcoming host. Allowing us to shower immediately (good call on her part) then she offered a sample of homemade goat cheese that she had milked from her own goats and a cup of tea. We had gotten to her house at around 8 so we ended up staying up pretty late just talking. It was then that I asked if I could buy any bread or eggs from her. Unfortunately she didn't have much that we could buy. But instead she offered to bake us bread at 10 at night. What a saint! She whipped out her cook book and pulled out a 30 minute bread recipe. We learned that the secret to making yeast rise quickly was to place a metal bowl of the yeast mixture in a sink of warm water. Cool trick!
In about 40 minutes the bread was out of the oven and cooling off on the table.

Before tucking into bed I battled a Huhu beetle which are twice as large as any normal cockroach and 3x as annoying. Apparently people eat the grubs...ew.

photo stolen from the internet

We went to bed buzzing with excitement, looking forward to the stretch of mountains (Tararuas) between us and Wellington.

River Road to Wanganui

January 5th- 9th River Road to Wanganui

Sorry everyone for taking so long to put up this post! I've been traveling around and enjoying the company of other TA hikers instead of keeping up with the blog. Now I'm finally getting caught up and back on track. No worries :)


This section has a lot of road walking in it so I'm going to summarize it all instead of the boring you with the day by day details of walking River Road from the river.

After our overnight landscape job Joss, Rob, Gill, Peter, Cody and I left the town of Jerusalem and traveled all the way to London (only a few kilometers away) the British were very happy to be in London so soon. And Gill who was from Isreal enjoyed his stay in Jerusalem.

The road was extremely hot, and asphalt bubbled up; sticking to our trekking poles and shoes. We met an old man along the way dragging a dead goat, and carrying a rifle with a silencer from a top of hillside and down to the road.

He let me hold his dead goat which was quite heavy and still warm. The old man and his dog drove off with their prize which was going to be the dogs dinner; or so he claimed. We stopped for lunch in the shade to escape the heat and while later the old man came back and asked us if we liked oranges. Peter immediately blurted out yes which was good because half of us couldn't understand his accent. The man then drove off again and came back around a couple of times. It was all very confusing but in the end he produced a giant bag of oranges which was much needed; I had three oranges to myself.

The highlight of our trip would be Cody and Gill's experience of running into two elderly American nudist who gave them a free bag of strawberries that they shared with us all.
We got to spend the night in a sheep shearing barn that had running water and kitchen, right next to the nudist cabin- we had gotten permission from the owners of the barn. Thankfully there were no more elderly nudy sightings after Cody's first run in.

Back in the barn we discovered that they had recently sheared sheep and had several barrels of wool in the shed.

No kitchen is complete without an arrow through the wall

Sheep have a very pungent oily smell to them which permeated my gear.

All six of us slept well that evening; in the morning we talked with the owners of the barn; mostly about the benefits of roundup for weed control. Kiwi's seem to be pretty evenly divided on the use of poisons to control their weeds and pests.

We continued on walking along river road and came across another sheep shearing shack; this one was actively shearing sheep.

The whole process was very quick, the shearer would be given a sheep, and in less than 5 minutes he would have him shaved and pushed down the hatch to join the other naked, bleeting, victims.

While climbing up the road and out of the valley we had some amazing views from the top of the mountain looking down at the Whanganui river.

We were quite happy to be walking along the road rather than paddling the last stretch down to Wanganui.
The last bit of highway walking was unpleasant as highways always are. But at the end of it all there was a little cafe, and the six of us enjoyed a nice lunch before we went our separate ways.

Cody and I got a hitch into town and checked into a Holiday Park. This one had some unusual additions .....the blob was by far my favorite part.

Whanganui River Trip

We're at the halfway point so check out our tracking map


http://mrcocard.followmyspot.com/jaz-and-cody-new-zealand

January 1st: Taumarunui Cherry Grove to Poukaria campsite (35km)

Yeti Tours put us in at Cherry Grove in Taumarunui- Having just celebrated Christmas there we were quite familiar with that area. We had little in the way of instruction; I guess once we let slip that we had had some experience with canoes they pretty much gave us a spot device and sent us on our way.

The first day of our 4 day trip had the most rapids. Cody was in the back steering and I was in the front motoring along. We didn't flip, but came close. Lesson learned, don't cross your legs when going through rapids. Our canoe glanced off an underwater log which threw me off balance. Cody said I leaned to about a 45 degree angle out of the boat. Thank goodness he countered my lean on the opposing side otherwise we would have gone over.

Around lunchtime we saw a sign for a cafe from our boat. It was going to be the only cafe we would encounter on the river; so of course we stopped and scampered up the hill to have lunch.

It was quite pricy, but we'll worth the experience. The cafe was also a beautiful lavender farm and garden. They sold lavender beauty products, and lavender honey.

We each enjoyed a large vegetable quiche, salad, and desserts on the porch overlooking the garden. Luckily no one else was there which made for a tranquil and relaxing experience.

Thank goodness we were only paddling after that lunch because both of us ate far too much we're hikers so what's new.

Back in the rapids we saw a black Longfin river eel jumping and dancing out of the water. This was the strangest behavior we'd seen yet. These eels can normally swim from the ocean, climb up rocks and dams to get to mountain streams so they are quite agile. Another cool fact is that they can live to be over a hundred years old.

We made it to the first camp in good time. We did 35 kilometers in 4.5 hours. If only we could make those kinds of times hiking.



January 2nd: Poukaria camp to Ohoura campsite (49km)

Unlike yesterday we started out today with very little Rapids. We occasionally went through some shallow riffles but most of our time was spent toughing our way through large pools with a head wind.

Hooray for large pools and head wind!

The jet boats were a new addition to this section of the river and they were by far more formidable than the rapids we just encountered.

Cody and I felt like big clumsy sitting targets for them. Not once did a jet boat slow down to go by us. They would generate a wake that would have tipped us over had we not stopped every time and repositioned the canoe stern forward into the wake. This slowed us down some since we seemed to be running into more jet boats as the day went on.

By far the coolest thing we came across today was a cave.  It was about as tall as a two-story house but not quite as deep. The walls were brittle and made out of a sandy material that people had carved their names into. The cave had probably taken thousands of years to make as the high walls of the canyon around us implied that the water levels fluctuated greatly. We had been warned that the water levels could rise over 12 meters in a single night. Luckily for us we had clear skies ahead.

Second coolest were all the waterfalls...

We arrived at Camp shortly after the cave visit. There were at least 30 people there so we worried about not being able to get a campsite. Luckily we spotted a few familiar faces; Rob Joss and Gil had already claimed a spot...right next to the long drop toilets! I guess it was an appropriate place to put all the smelly TA hikers.

 Some Israeli guy running off with all of our stuff

                    The gang back together again

                                 Tent city


We saw and heard many possums that night in camp. They were obviously used to being around people and seemed bolder than the possums that we were used two in the bush. The possums in New Zealand were introduced by fur traders from Australia and they are a lot prettier and more polite than American possums. Here they are considered a pest and New Zealanders try their hardest to exterminate the population by using poison and traps.

I'm still working on getting a picture if the cute little buggers, but for now here's one I grabbed off the web.

January 3rd: Ohoura campsite to to Tieke camp (34km)

We left camp paddling with Rob, Joss and Gil and picked up Kenzie, Cam and Peter along the way at a different campsite.

Rob and Joss were by far the most entertaining on the river since they had perfected the art of going down rapids backwards. Cody and I should take tips from them for our next River race.

We saw a canoe that had been recently wrapped around a log; the paddles were still stuck in the canoe. All of us thought this was quite impressive since it was the only log in the middle of a large stretch of the river.

Later that day we pulled up to a traffic jam by the river and park or canoes in order to hike up to the bridge to nowhere.

That bridge was built for returning war veterans after World War one so they could farm and a newly developed settlement. Unfortunately a major highway was built and everyone deserted the town leaving behind a magnificent bridge that literally goes to nowhere.

While returning back to our boat from the bridge to nowhere we saw a jet boat haul off with the wrecked canoe.

That would have cost the unlucky paddlers over $400 not including the damage to the canoe. Lesson learned paddle and pay attention.

On a lighter note, Cody set the trend for stand up paddling in the canoe.

We ended our day at Tieke camp, it was our last night all together. We circled our tents in our own TA group away from all the other campers.

This particular camp was hosted by a Maori family; and they had a Pa (Church) on site. For a fee we could have joined their nightly ceremony but we decided just to watch from camp. No pictures were allowed to be taken. Traditionally the ceremony first starts with lengthy introductions from both the visitors and Maori family; and a song must be sung buy both parties as well. The women campers we're expected to sit on the floor behind the men and children who got chairs. After the ceremony the tribe and campers rub noses in farewell.

We were visited by two fat wood pigeons that night, they were feeding on the small seeds from the tree near our tents

(these are the same birds that get drunk off of fermented berries, and gorge themselves until they are too heavy to fly) Cody and I were practically drooling at the sight of these scrumptious looking targets. It would be just an easy slingshot away...But since the birds are protected this was just a trail food fantasy.

January 4th: Tieke camp to Pipriki (21km)

Everyone left camp early in the morning to make it to our pick up time. We've had unusually good weather and today looked like it would be just as georgous.

Later on in the day we stopped to take lunch. Four guys floated with their 2 sunken canoes towards our lunch spot; they had both taken the fun rapid above our rest stop at the same time and collided.

Near the end of the river trip we we're gifted with one last cave and this one was the best of all. It had a very large waterfall inside.

We paddled 21 km that day and ended our trip in a middle of nowhere town called Pipriki.

We were there by one but weren't allowed to leave until 3pm since Yeti was holding our bags hostage. Yeti Tours were alright, but here's why I would go with their rival Blazing Paddles. Our canoe was so worn the bottom was warped from over use. My paddle was so worn it had fiberglass that was constantly cutting into my hands. Our dry bags were not waterproof. And we didn't get any food! The other TA hikers who had gone with blazing paddles had completely new gear, new canoes, and were given fresh plumbs, eggs, and bread when they were dropped off and picked up. For all future TA hikers you should go with Blazing Paddles. Cody and I were later told that the yeti outfit use to be run by passionate paddlers who had a great reputation. The new owner of Yeti Tours does not canoe or kayak; and is only concerned with making money. Hence why our gear was over 25 years old and why I was paddling with a piece of insulation.

We hiked 12 km down river rd. to a Nuns covenant that was listed in our guidebook as a place to stay. Unfortunately the nuns weren't home and we had to fend for ourselves. We ended up striking a deal with a Maori woman who lived next store to the Nuns. We all took turns mowing her lawn in exchange for a place to set up our tents. She was also the towns only "quickie mart" so we were able to pick up a few snacks-bonus! I suck at mowing so Cody had to go over a few of my spots.

Apart from being bitten by hundreds of sand flys, we had a relatively nice stay.