Day 31 - jumping ahead
Auckland CBD —-> Mercer 85km bus
The next section of trail (Onehunga through to Mercer) was a chunk of the trail I wasn’t particularly interested in walking. From Onehunga it skirts Auckland airport and its associated industrial estates, then follows the roads through the southern suburbs. I’d read it was insanely dull, monotonous and a little sketchy at times. With little to no options to camp along the way, it was a pretty easy decision to skip this section and hop on a bus 85km south straight to Mercer.
As we packed up our things in the hotel, I handed over a few things for Josh to take back to Sydney, things I now considered as dead weight. A pack of cards we hadn’t opened once (who has time for games!?), our bowls; now I was on my own, I could just eat out of our cooking pot. A extra pair of socks I wasn’t wearing. Similarly, Josh handed me the bits he was carrying which I now had to carry on my own - the tent, the PLB, our knife. It was a bit of a shock picking up my bag with the new gear in - I didn’t even have that many days worth of food in there and it was significantly heavier than before. I pretended to Josh it was fine and told myself I’d get used to it.
We had a late (great) breakfast in a cute cafe, sipping our coffees as slowly as we could to fill the time before my bus early that afternoon. Josh’s flight to Sydney wasn’t until the evening so we had a few hours to kill. We wandered around the city with our bags before heading to the bus station. After an emotional goodbye, the bus set off for Pokeno, some 90 minutes (by bus) south of Auckland, where i’d transfer to a local bus service for a quick ride to Mercer.
I pulled into the Mercer service station and instantly wished I’d got the bus further south. Clearly once a hub of activity for commuters travelling through, Mercer was now a run down small settlement next to the major highway with only a Macca’s, a motel and dodgy-looking Irish pub as its main attractions.
The motel reception didn’t open for an hour so I wandered over to Macca’s, grabbed a milkshake and made use of the aircon and the speedy wifi.
My home for the night was in the motel “garden”. There was one other TA walker there, Robert - he’d set off just a few days ago from Auckland. I rolled into bed pretty early and tried to drown out the sound of the highway with my earplugs.
