A Dangerous Business

Date: 20th November 2023

Start: Mangawhai Travellers Rest (km 449)

End: Rodney Road (km 476)

Distance Travelled: 27 km

Total Distance Completed: 476.3 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Venom by Eminem

Weather Dodging Skills: like Neo from The Matrix (except for the last climb)

At long last I’ll be leaving Northland. I’ve spent close to a month up here and while I’m certainly glad I got to explore it, it feels good to start exploring the other regions of New Zealand. Today’s walk was supposed to be fairly easy (little bit of foreshadowing there), just down Pakiri Beach to, well, Pakiri Beach Holiday Park. As such, we all had a relaxed morning. Except Lupi, Lupi seems to enjoy getting going pretty early. I hit the road at 9, leaving Mangawhai behind me on a gravel road towards the beach.

Melly left a little later, leaving Jazz Hands and I to walk together. On flat ground I’m a bit faster than him but I was enjoying the company so I hung back with him for a bit.

Then came the beach.

If the picture wasn’t obvious, we’d arrived close to high tide. There was enough room to walk on, only the sand was on the soft side, but not Ocean Beach soft. This stretch of coast is fairly underdeveloped, mostly because this is the nesting site for the Tara Iti, the fairy tern, of which there are only 35 left. There are signs all over the beach warning people to stay away from the dunes. Pragmatically it also made sense for us as the dunes are made of very soft sand, making for a miserable walk.

A quick lunch stop at the foot of Te Arai Heads followed this first beach section before heading over the heads.

It was only a small cameo in an otherwise monotonous day. I got back into my beach walking rhythm and plodded away. Jazz had gotten a bit of a lead on me by this point. I could just make out his silhouette in the distance and focused on catching him before the final river crossings we had to do. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that we had three crossings to complete. Two of them were small streams (both still requiring the removal of boots), but the final one before the campsite was a proper river and is the reason for us starting so late; low tide was at 7:50pm.

Back to my current location, I got a bit tunnel visioned on catching him that I never stopped to turn around a see if anyone else was coming out way. That’s when I saw this:

The forecast had predicted rain from mid-afternoon and it seemed that this was the system that was bringing it. But it never got closer, instead heading out to sea. To think that if I had left Mangawhai any later I might have been caught in it. Can I dodge weather (more foreshadowing)?

I did eventually catch up to Jazz, reaching the river at 4pm. I went scouting for places to go upstream, but when I looked back I saw Jazz just motoring out to sea. What he’d seen was a sandbank right at the river’s mouth which looked pretty shallow. I quickly abandoned my searching and did my best to copy his steps out to the bank. From there be crossing went swimmingly – not literally. The waves on my came up to my thighs, arriving at the campsite at 4:15.

This caused a bit of a dilemma. See, the walk tomorrow through the Omaha and Dome Forests has a similar infamy as the Raetea and Puketi forests. Going from here to the Dome “Cafe” in a day would be exhausting. But, there is a spot to camp 5 km further up the track, at the top of a 300 m climb that I would otherwise have to do first thing tomorrow. I’d be breaking my rule of wanting to reach camp by mid-arvo, but it seemed like the best option considering what I’d be facing tomorrow.

Once my feet were clean and dry, the boots went back on and I hit the trail once more, swiftly navigating a gravel road to the centre of Pakiri which included a school, community hall, and a couple houses.

The climb began with 2 km to go. It was predictably steep, not a worrying amount. I had plenty of time to reach the top.

Then the heavens opened. In a big way. Catching me completely off guard halfway up the climb. I hastily put my rainjacket onto my very sweaty body but didn’t bother with the pants as I thought its only be light rain. I would soon come to realise it wasn’t light. From then on I threw all caution to the wind and bolted up the hill as fast as I could, reaching camp at 6:20. Trouble was, it was still raining and didn’t look like easing up anytime soon. It took some time but I finally plucked up the courage to set up in the rain, frantically getting it pegged down without it getting too wet. Once the fly was up I dove inside, whipped out my damp towel and did my best at drying out the floor. It’s not an experience I want to go through again, but chances are it will at some point.

Once the rain eased up I opened up my tent fly and made dinner, keenly observed by a very friendly chicken.

Now that’s one thing I really want to avoid: cooking in the rain. I can’t exactly use my stove with my tent shut as I’ll gas myself. We’ll just have to cross that bridge if we ever get there. After eating, I only stepped outside briefly to use the toilet and brush my teeth, after which I tried to sleep, but was kept up by the thoughts of what horror await me on trail tomorrow.

I know one thing is for certain: mud.