Day 24. Mangawhai heads - Pakiri holiday park

Every morning I try to be up by 7 am and out by 8 am, but it never seems to happen for me. I'm slow in the morning. I eventually got my two feet going by 830am - quite early for me - since low tide on the beach was 930 am, and I had to cross a few streams. Three to be exact.

The morning was boring. Around 15km road walking through town until I eventually made it to the beach. I lost one of my headphone ear pieces, which hurt my motivation a tad.

Walking on the beach felt odd and wrong. I was so accustomed to walking with the ocean to my right from Ninety Mile beach, but now that I'm on the east coast the ocean is on my left. It felt like I was going the wrong way.

I was successful in calling the rains bluff. The forcast wasn't sure when it would hit, but my guess was sometime in the late afternoon to evening. The morning was sunny and beautiful with some stray clouds lingering.

My original plan for the day was to make it half way to pakiri and set up camp early. This way I would avoid the heavy rain that I assumed would hit in the late afternoon. After crossing my first stream, and hitting the point i planned to camp I decided to keep walking and make it pakiri. I knew I was taking a risk as there were two other streams that I needed to ford and high tide was coming in. While on my way down the beach I came across a group of surfers and paddle boarders enjoying the sunny afternoon. A few waves were exchanged and I continued forward.

I finally reached the second of three streams I needed to cross today. It was deep enough that I had to take my boots off and wide enough that I couldn't jump across. So boots off, pants rolled up, and push though. The cool water is always nice on my tired feet, but there's always fine sand that gets lodged in between my toes that risk blisters when I put my shoes back on.

I came across two washed up penguins on the beach today :(

Eventually I made it to pakiri holiday park, but there was a river that ran between us. This river was the largest and deepest one yet. I picked the widest section, took the boots off, rolled up the pants and made it across easily enough !

Heavy rain started just as I arrived at the Holiday park. I managed to pitch my tent before it became too overwhelming. I'm bushed. I can hardly write this blog post.

I have some hard climbs coming up In the next few days and with all the rain it means it's going to be muddy! Raetea forest all over again? Let's hope not.