A Dangerous Business

Date: 15th November 2023

Start: Pataua North Road (km 354.8)

End: Ocean Beach (km 378.4)

Distance Travelled: 23.6 km

Total Distance Completed: 378.7 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Enchanted by Kings Kaleidoscope

Mud: yes

Being woken up by an alarm at 7am was oddly comforting. Because of the tide times at Taiharuru estuary, there was no need to get going early unless you wanted to try your luck crossing at high tide. I didn’t and neither did anyone else, so we all had an unusual but very appreciated lazy morning. No one was in a rush to pack up their stuff, we just sat around and had brekkie together, followed by Ann and Derek providing us with date loaf and flat whites for an early morning tea. They have gone above and beyond what I expected out of a trail angel and I’m incredibly grateful for the love they’ve shown us all.

When all was said and done, I left their place at 11 for an easy 10 km road walk to the estuary. Again, there wasn’t anything of note to see, thankfully the road was fairly quiet. Kinda funny to think that yesterday at 11, I had already completed a decent number of kilometres in my frantic attempt to get to Ngunguru on time, and now here I am feeling good having barely done any walking at all.

An hour and a bit later, I reached the quite town of Pataua where I met up with the early starters (Tom, Jazz, and Jamie) and Lupi for lunch.

The rule of thumb with river crossings around here is that they’re doable 2 hours either side of low did, which today was at 3:40. But, the estuary crossing is 3 km in length, so it’s possible to start earlier because by the time you reach the deeper bits, you’ll be within that 2 hour window. That’s what those four guys would be attempting, with myself, Melly, and Matt waiting for a bit longer. We ended up arriving at the start of the crossing at 2pm, well within the safe window.

Off came the boots, on went the reef shoes, and into the sand/mud/other substance I went.

The track is marked by large poles with the eponymous orange triangles drilled into them. They’re pretty easy to follow, skirting around the mangrove-lined river banks. Unexpectedly, the track was rather dry, a knee-deep section at the start notwithstanding.

I mean, I know it’s low tide but I still assumed we’d be in water for the whole crossing. Well you won’t be hearing me complaining, dry sand banks mean quicker pace through the estuary. I couldn’t last forever, with the river greeting us as we rounded the bend.

This is typically the deepest bit of the crossing, so the marker poles are closer together. Also, per James’ instructions from yesterday, you have to walk directly from pole to pole, as it gets very deep if you veer off course; Tom reported water up to his belly button because of this!

Yet again, the water barely went above my knees, kissing the bottom of my shorts. For the most part, the crossing was a breeze much like the Horahora was yesterday. Sadly also similar was how we’d be exiting the river: an incredibly muddy track through mangroves.

This is when I did something very clever. Right at the end when the track rises onto a grassy field, I saw what looked like a deep pool filled with black mud. The sides of the track were untouched, so I thought, “great, an easy detour around the icky stuff!”

The opposite happened, and I sank into knee-deep mud, properly stuck. Melly and Matt found my predicament very amusing, Matt quickly bringing his camera to bear on by very sad self. What’s worse is I could feel my shoes being sucked off my feet. They may have only been cheap reef shoes from Kathmandu, but I’d like to keep them with me for future river crossing. After much trial and error and considerable physical exertion, I freed my feet and my mud-enveloped shoes.

20 minutes or so were then spent cleaning up our feet and making sure any open wounds were treated properly. My reef shoes were unceremoniously dumped in a plastic bag to be washed later. Everything smelled awful. But not to matter, we still had a lot of walking to go, including a whole lot of beach.

First things first, we had to climb up Kauri Mountain. Most of it is covered in farmland and prices properties, but the peak is an area of regenerating native land. It was a pretty steep climb up to the top – not that easy after a decent days hike already under our belts – but it all became worth it when we looked over Ocean Beach and towards Bream Head.

If it wasn’t obvious, yes we’d be climbing that ridge tomorrow. Descending off the mountain via a gravel farm track, we made our way to the beach for the final 6 km of the day.

It was just after 5 pm at this point and I was keen to reach camp as soon as possible. The beach had other plans. For starters, there was a small river crossing near the beginning that was just too deep for my boots, so I took them off and walked barefoot for a bit. I stopped to put them back on, but my towel was doing an abysmal job at cleaning my feet, so I gave up and decided to walk the rest barefoot. The tide was also coming in, forcing me to walk on soft sand. Neither of these things helped my pace in the slightest and I could feel my arrive time getting later and later. To make matters worse, there’s a rocky headland right at the far end of the beach, which by now had water over the rocks making it impassable. Far Out said there was a high tide route that was easy to find… but none of us could find it. We even resorted to trying to climb up the gorse-coveredhill which went about as well as you can expect. We did find it after about half an hour of looking, sighting an organs arrow pointing directly up a steep sandy slope. Not the most fun experience when you’re wearing flip flops.

When we finally reached camp by 7:15, I quickly erected my tent and sat down for dinner, not really feeling like talking much after that whole beach saga. Honestly, I’d take Ninety Mile over this beach any day of the week if it came to walking it (Ocean Beach is objectively prettier). Luckily, this camp had a hot shower much to my delight, which was enthusiastically used to rid my legs and feet of that disgusting mangrove mud before jumping into bed, trying not to think too hard about what was in store for me tomorrow.