Day 22 - back on sand
Mangawhai —-> Pakiri Beach holiday park 24km
Feeling refreshed and more importantly, not wet, we jumped back in the car to get a lift back to trail with our Airbnb host - he dropped us at New World to get a final few items we couldn’t get in town. Milton and Steph had messaged to say miraculously they were both walking the same stretch as us today - they were just a few km ahead of us. After we’d all gone our separate ways on Bream Head we were excited to get the gang back together again.
Shortly after leaving town, we crossed the border into the Auckland region - we were officially done with Northland. One region down, nine to go!
The first few km after town zig zagged through a pine plantation. The smell from the trees permeated through the whole forest and I prayed it would seep into my clothes to replace my hiker stench. At the end of the plantation we found Milton sat on bench tending to his poor feet. Pretty sure that’s how we left him about four days ago…!
After sitting for a bit too long, we walked down onto our old friend, the beach. There was 15km of sand to conquer today across two beaches. I reckoned it was the final bit of major sand for at least 1000km... It was made a little more interesting by a few river crossings giving us an opportunity to stop, sit down and get our toes cold for a moment.
After the first crossing, a hiker came striding around the corner - we thought it was Milton at first but Milton was pretty hobbly due to a dodgy ankle and this guy was flying along. We hadn’t met any other SOBO hikers since the day we started, we were beginning to think we were the last ones! This was Wyatt, he’d started four days after us, doing some big days where we’d had zeros - we were pretty much the only TA hikers he’d met since Cape Reinga. I felt grateful that there was a few of us walking at a similar pace and crossing paths along the way to keep each other company.
We trudged along for the rest of the beach, feeling rather miserable when the rain started up again, but tried to keep the pace up so we could make it to the holiday park before the shop closed at 5pm. We were in at 4.45pm and I had downed a Fanta by 4.47pm.
We set up the tent and Steph, Milton & Wyatt joined us on the grass for a stretch session and a chat - beach days always feel the hardest. On my body yes but more so on my brain - continuously looking at the same view and walking with the same movement hour after hour over and over really drains me. Everyone else was also very over the sand so it felt good to moan about it together.
After another failed attempt at the Airbnb to fix my air mattress I resorted to borrowing some cushions from the TV room at the holiday park to lie on that night. Only four more nights before we were in Auckland and could sort it properly…
