A Dangerous Business

Date: 5th November 2023

Start: Broadwood

End: Blackbridge Road Campsite (km 177)

Distance Walked: 8.3 km walked + 28.5 km hitched (36.8 km total)

Total Distance Completed: 169.9 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Évidemment by La Zarra

Francophone Population of Tonight’s Camp: almost everyone

Even in fine weather, I can’t escape getting a wet tent. I wake up, look up at the tent fly, and it’s covered in dew. So is everything else in the park. The tall grass, the benches, everyone’s tents, it was all soaked. By the time I actually rose from my tent a few people had already hung up their tent flies on the fence to dry them off as best they could before setting off.

Speaking of which, we were very slow at getting started today. I don’t want to call anyone out for it, but Marlon did spend an awfully long time “getting ready”. It was a bit frustrating because we potentially had a 20 km walk ahead of us. I say “potentially” because the entire walk is on the road to Mangamuka and the trail notes recommend hitchhiking it due to the lack of any good places to walk along it.

So, we heeded that advice. We’d walk on the road, but anytime a car came past in the right direction we’d try to hail it down. I didn’t have high hopes as its not a busy road and it’s a Sunday. Thankfully, I was proven wrong, as after around 1.5-2 km a ute pulled over. Slight problem: it was only a single cab and the driver had already picked up a hiker by the name of Linda from Melbourne. The solution: we’d get in the tray.

After about 5 km, the driver had reached his property so it was back to road walking. Although not for long, as soon another car pulled us over, albeit with a similar problem. It was a BMW SUV, the passenger seat was occupied by the driver’s father, and there were 4 of us. Linda was enjoying the walk so she kept going, I wanted a ride, so Marlon and Vadem fought for the remaining seat (fight in this case meaning trying to force the other person to take the seat). Marlon won so Vadem and I hitched all the way to Mangamuka and its famous dairy. We grabbed drinks whilst waiting for Marlon, who arrived about a half hour later. As we sat for lunch, we discussed whether we should call it a day early and camp here, or continue onto the next campsite 17 km away. As it was only 12:30, having to hang around Mangamuka all day didn’t sound that appealing, so we decided to press on.

This would be more akin to the roads we went on yesterday. The sun was out in full force which made it hard to keep my eyes open due to its reflection off the gravel surface.

We were getting a but sick to road walking by this point, so although it would be unlikely, we agreed to try and hitch this road if at all possible. After about 3 km, a ute came along, so up our thumbs went, not really expecting them to stop. But they did. Their car was full of people, stuff, and dogs, but the driver said they could quickly drop everything off at their home and come back for us. Well that’s a pleasant surprise!

Don’t worry, it gets better. Instead of dropping us off at the intersection with the 4WD track that would take us to the campsite , this guy turned onto it… and kept going! In fact, he took us all the way to Apple Dam campsite (the old camp before Kauri Dieback was found there). Talk about trail magic, we now only had 4.5 km to walk! I’m afraid I don’t have much to share from the walk, the only interesting thing that happened was the numerous bee hives scattered on the sides of the track.

When we arrived at camp, it was already very busy, with several tents already set up. Over the next hour, the rest of the walkers who we stayed with in Broadwood (apart from Linda) came on it. We now had around 10 people at this campsite, and almost all of them are Francophone.

I’ve met quite a diverse number of nationalities on this trail so far, but I’ve never encountered this many people speaking the same language (not including English) in the same place at the same time.

Anyway, I had a rather relaxing afternoon there, apart from getting a random coughing fit. Remember when I mentioned I had a cold? Well it’s turned into a classic Southward long-term psot-viral cough. Most of the time I’m completely fine, but every now and then I’ll burst into a violent coughing fit. It’s incredibly frustrating, and I unfortunately didn’t pickup any medicine for within Kaitaia. I’m starting to get a bit concerned, so I might see a doctor in Kerikeri if I can to get some medication that worked well last time I had something like this.