Day 2 - beach time
Twilight campsite —> Maunganui Bluff 28km
Everything I’d read about the next three days and 90 mile beach were horror stories. Tales of swollen feet, burnt arms and an endless monotony of sand meant we were feeling a bit of trepidation heading into today. What I’d not read however, anywhere, was how stunningly beautiful it was. Heading out of twilight campsite we were met with rolling green hills straight out of the Yorkshire Dales. What was not reminiscent of Northern England however were the giant yellow sand dunes that were nestled alongside, cuddled up with the hills. The desert plonked right next to the countryside. It was incredible.
About 500m down the trail we heard a yelp back towards camp. We could see our campsite through the bush and looked to see our two campmates Milton and Jason… oh god what had we forgotten. We started mentally going through our packs and patting ourselves down before Josh realised it was our walking poles…! Very grateful to those guys! Not grateful for the extra km it added onto our already long day. That will not be happening again.
Starting again, we followed the bush path for 3km or so until we came out onto a clearing overlooking the real first test of the TA. 90 mile beach. We’d heard if you can get through this, you’ll be strong enough to finish the whole thing… just a cool 25km to test us out on day 2.
We started off pretty joyous, enjoying the new scenery and bounding along at a fairly decent pace. Theres pretty much one view for the next 85km, the sand the dunes and the ocean. The occasional gull and wild horse to keep us company.
By 1pm we were feeling it. A quick look at the map horrendously revealed we still had about half the km for the day to go. Seeing a herd of wild horses meandering along the beach with 2km to go spurred us on. We the hobbled into camp around 4.30pm and collapsed into a pile.
Steph the pocket rocket had already been there for about an hour and she came bounding over with words we didn’t think we’d hear until the following night. “THERE’S A SHOWER!” I’ve never appreciated freezing cold water in a tin hut so much.
We went to bed massaging our feet as much as we could, knowing that another long beach day was ahead of us…
Brekkie - oats
Lunch - chicken, tomato spinach and pesto wrap
Snacks - boiled egg, jerky, nuts, OSM protein bar
Dinner - Back country Thai chicken curry
