A Dangerous Business

Date: 12th November 2023

Start: The Farm (km 281.2)

End: Helena Ridge (km 306.3)

Distance Travelled: 16 km walked + 9.1 km hitchhiked (25.1 km total)

Total Distance Completed: 299.7 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

Hours Saved by Hitching: around 2

Another night camping, another wet wake up. I’m getting used to it now, my strategy is to leave the fly on my tent until the sun comes over any mountains in the way, at which point I take it off, shake off any excess moisture and find somewhere to hang it up; The Farm has a very convenient clothesline that everyone turned into a tentflyline (I’m making this a word, take note Merriam-Webster). By the time I rose most people had already packed their tents down, whereas I tend to have breakfast before working on that. Whatever works for them, I guess.

Unfortunately, not all of us would be continuing on trail today. Vicki, like most of us, has been dealing with blisters for a while now and one of them has become infected. Not wanting to risk it becoming worse – like getting sepsis in the middle of the forest – she’s decided to catch a ride into Whangarei to see a doctor in the hopes she’ll be good to go again when the rest of us arrive down there. Taking risks with one’s health is reckless in the best of circumstances, but when you’re making heavy physical demands of your body each and every day, it’s downright dangerous.

One by one, everyone continuing on trail today packed up and said their goodbyes, most of whom were aiming for a campsite on Helena Ridge (me included).

Typically, I left later than I intended, but without any concerns about needing to rush to camp like I felt in Puketi Forest. The majority of today’s walk was on the same road I came in on yesterday, so my intention was to hitch as much of it as I could. Trouble is, it was a Sunday morning, there wasn’t a great deal of traffic.

Sure enough, I walked for about an hour before someone pulled over. The driver, Mel, was only going a few km down the road, but I still accepted as any little bit helps. We talked a lot in our short ride together, really exemplifying the attitude most Kiwis have to us walkers, being very welcoming and wanting to help out however they can. I walked a few more klicks before picking up my second lift at the turn-off to Oakura Bay. This one took me all the way to Helena Bay, which I initially expected to be this nice, small beach town, maybe with a little general store selling ice cream. No, it was even smaller than that.

More worryingly, there was nowhere to get water from. Yes, there was a tank at the campsite on the ridge, but there had been reports from a gmfew days ago that it was running low and there hadn’t been much rain since then. Luckily there was a stream just a little ways back from the beach, so Matt and I got some water from there before heading up the ridge.

Now let’s talk about this ridge. It was only 7 km from the beach to the campsite but we’d be climbing to over 300 m, and not uniformly. I was expecting some pretty tough, slow sections, so I gave myself 3 hours to do it in. I learnt my lesson from Puketi Forest and mentally prepared myself for what lay ahead. Before the tough bits, however, I reached this milestone.

In is it under 2 weeks, I had walked 300 km. This is already 3 times further than my previous longest track, the Great Ocean Walk, and I still had 2700 km to go. I’m still not sure that figure has quite sunk in yet as I’m just taking things one day at a time. Like with complex engineering projects, splitting up the whole walk into smaller, more ma useable sections means it’s much easier to prepare for each day’s hike, with each day adding onto the main project that is the entire Te Araroa trail.

The first km was very exposed, without any wind-powered air cooling (editor’s note: why didn’t I just say there was no wind?). I then got swallowed up by the forest on a pretty overgrown track, again feeling thankful for the lack of snakes in this country. This is where the climbing started to push me. In typical Kiwi fashion, when the track met a hill, it went straight up that hill; no nice switchbacks, just straight up the hill. Yes, it was tough, every step becoming more laboured, but I didn’t feel nearly as much pressure as I did in Puketi. Every 30 metres or so, I would stop for a minute and catch my breath before continuing.

It was slow going, I’ll grant you that, but there is no way to complete this track at the same pace I can walk a long road section. Lupi caught up with me in the last kilometre of this track which Far Out suggested would be incredibly steep. In the end it didn’t take either of us that long, and sighting a gap in the trees, we emerged onto the top.of a grassy hill overlooking the secluded bays of the east coast.

With 2 km to go, we stuck together and got chatting about our lives back in our respective homes and what our plans were after the trail was done. As someone who talks incoherently fast at times, speaking with Lupi for whom English is their second language was good in helping me consciously slow down my speech so he could understand it better. One of the best ways to learn and practice speaking a second language is talking with a native speaker of that language. In two weeks, I have met people from many nations around the world, so if they can understand me better, it means I can form better relationships with them.

We briefly descended into the forest again until we at last arrived a camp.

There really wasn’t much of anything here. We had a picnic bench, a water tank (that was completely full!), and land on which one could pitch a tent. Where my bag is on the left hand side of the above picture was one of the last semi-flat places left. The only real luxury was a container full of eggs that the landowner had left for us for 50 cents each. Sounds like the makings of a decent breakfast to me.

Tom and Jazz were already set up as were John and Laur, a couple from the States who had chosen to flip-flop the Northland part of the trail, going NOBO to the Cape from Auckland and then returning to do the rest of the trail SOBO. As the hours weaned, Melly and Matt also arrived at camp, as did – surprisingly – Jamie who had somehow come all the way from a campsite near Russell. He had planned to stay with a trail angel in Helena Bay itself, but they were away in Auckland for the weekend. This little stretch of land was filling up quite quickly. No one else arrived, and with the temperature dropping as rapidly as the sun over the horizon I made my way to bed, only to stay up way too late writing up yesterday’s post and a bit of doomscrolling on social media. Maybe having mobile signal was a bad thing…