Day 3 - the penguin
Maunganui Bluff - Hukatere Campsite 30km
The classified ads that read “loves long walks on the beach” have clearly never walked along 90 mile beach. I’ve now realised why all the blogs and videos of this section talk about pain. It’s all suffering. And it never ends. The beach is so long there’s not even a landmark in the distance you can sight to keep your motivation high as it edges closer. There’s nothing. Just sand ocean sand ocean sand ocean.
The first few hours were fine, we trudged along; heads down headphones in until a shooting pain raced through my left foot. The pain was shortly followed by a wet warm goo slithering between my toes, I’d burst a blister, right between my big and second toes. We sat down for lunch, let our feet rest and I patched myself up as best as I could. We still had another 17km to go.
Hobbling along, we spied Milton and Jason up ahead a few hours later. Appearing like a mirage out of the ocean’s spray, they were stood very still, right at the waters edge. It was weird. As we got closer we saw why, they were stood next to a teeny tiny Little penguin! We’d seen a few dead penguins over the past couple of days but this one was alive! I was entranced.
It was clearly injured, it had buried its feet in the sand and was shivering. Milton tried to move him back to the water but he just floated with the tide, when he tried to waddle across the sand he couldn’t, it looked like his little penguin leg was broken.
My heart now also broken, we plodded along, spurred on with the knowledge that in 9km time there would be a very refreshing shower waiting for us. We left Jason & Milton watching over the penguin, they were trying to get in contact with a bird rescue service close by.
Finally seeing the sign for Hukatere Lodge almost brought me to tears. We traipsed into the campsite and for the second day in a row collapsed into a pile on the floor. An hour later Jason & Milton also crawled in … penguin in tow. They couldn’t get a hold of the bird rescue people so instead, Milton carried it the remaining 9km to camp! Jason was carrying a spare town backpack (!) so the little penguin was curled up in there. Gaby from the lodge kindly brought out a large cage for the penguin to spend the night before DOC could pick him up in the morning. Dinner was spent treating blisters and babysitting peng.
(For any future TA walkers - there is an access point directly from the beach, don’t take the gravel driveway it will add on at least a km to your weary legs. Just carry on a little further and there should be access directly from the dunes).
Brekkie - oats
Lunch - egg, tomato, pepper & pesto wrap
Dinner - Thai noodle soup
