Day 6 - no more sand
Kaitaia —> Takahue Saddle Road Campground 5km hitch + 17km walk
The benefit of staying in a motel is that we can forgo the usual oats so simple and go all in with a Full English for breakfast. Delivered to our room no less.
Bellies full, our legs refreshed-ish and my feet feeling at least a teeny bit better, we walked down Kaitata high street to the junction with SH1 where we’d be looking for our first hitch. I’d only ever hitchhiked once before, and it was unintentional. Always check the fuel levels in your car when travelling through Alice Springs folks. Josh had never.
The first 5km of today’s journey was along SH1; an 80km busy road with no pavement or grassy verge or room for anything other than cars; it would be pretty hairy to walk.
Josh’s shoulder was conveniently aching so standing with his thumb out “would have been quite agonising” for him. I was therefore in charge of flagging down a ride. 10 minutes in and we were piling into the back of Tania’s red Toyota - she often passed TA walkers hitching here and picked them up in the morning as she drove to work. What a dream. Tania told us we were in for an absolute treat of a week in Northland with gorgeously sunny days ahead. After months of rain - it seemed we’d brought the sunshine with us.
The road out of Kaitaia wasn’t anything special, but it wasn’t sand, so it was glorious. We headed along a gravel track for 7km until we hit the little village of Takahue. We shaded from the sun outside the local village hall and had lunch, admiring the farmland and wild flowers all around us. The next 10km continued through farmland until it started rising up into the valley. Even the sudden addition of hills didn’t bother us. Again, it wasn’t sand. The views were spectacular as we looked down across the Northland countryside, keeping an eye out for Hobbits…
We arrived at our campsite mid afternoon, some patch of land donated by a farmer for TA walkers to stop for the night. Wonderfully they’d built a shower and an outdoor sink, as well as an awning to shelter and a full long drop toilet! Very luxurious by campsite standards. Unfortunately the shower nor the sink worked, the awning was completely broken and the long drop was full. The water tank however was almost overflowing so we filled out bottles and settled in to read our books back out on the road where we had some shade.
It was our first night on our own since starting the trail, so we thought we’d try sleeping under the stars without our tent cover on. 60 mins in we were soaking wet. We didn’t realise how high we were - well and truely in the clouds.
