Jackets on. Jackets off. Jackets on.

19 May

Whananaki to Punaruku

KM 292.5

Distance: 41km*

Elevation: ascent 683m; descent 770m

Steps: 51,000

Time: 7:00am - 4:15pm

*Hithchiked 8km of road.

The forecast rain was not around when we woke up this moning and so we decided to set forth and hope that we would escape the predicted heavy showers. 

For the second day in a row we faced a diversion off the official Te Araroa route because a section of track has been closed. This time by Northland Regional Council until they upgrade the track with kauri protection measures. The order of the day was road walk, Helena Ridge Track, road walk. 

As a visual aid, here's a screenshot of today's route. We started at the bottom right corner where the yellow and purple lines meet. The yellow line is the official TA route and the purple is the diversion. The blue dot in the top left is our end-of-day destination.

A friendly local picked us up after 5 km walking out of Whananaki. Cordelia is a drug and alcohol counsellor who works in Whangarei. She was already a little late for an appointment but still went out of her way to drop us at a suitable location for us to continue walking safely.

Apart from it being a scenic, quiet country road there's not much more to write. Except that we came across this pile. They're kina, or sea urchin, shells. We found these a few kilometres inland so someone must have collected them and had a feed. Along this part of the road, we several times had to put our packs down to don our raincoats, only to reverse the process five minutes later when the rain had stopped and the heat and humidity made it unbearable to be wearing raincoats.

The Helena Ridge Track is a rough tramping track which initially passes through a working farm before entering a kauri forest. It was quite up and down but we enjoyed walking through in the misty, drizzly rain. We reached the end of the farm at about 11:15 and our stomachs decided it was lunchtime. We jumped over the stile and sat down on a platform next to the farm fence. Soon we heard footsteps in the grass. We looked up and saw a bull's head poked over the ridge checking us out. It was soon joined by another, then another, until the herd of a dozen we had walked past earlier were checking us out from the other side of the fence. Soon we were all eating lunch together, us with our salami, cheese and crackers and them with their fresh greens salad.

 

Much of the native forest in this part of Northland is kauri forest, and today's section is no exception. If you need help identifying kauri, this photo may help. It's got distinctive bark, but also very distinctive leaves (you can see a few small branches on the ground next to the trunk). you just may not see the leaves often because these trees grow very tall. Also, if the trunk is bigger around than your car, it's a safe bet it's a kauri! This is a relatively young kauri tree, since it was only just too big for us to get our arms around.

One of the other mainstays of this forest is the puriri tree. Again, this has a very disinctive bark. It also tends to be pockmarked, where puriri moths have laid their larva inside the bark, and then full-grown moths have hatched out. These two branches of this puriri tree have many moth marks, but also just look like they've been intentionally carved!

Coming out of the forest, we were hit yet again by the beauty of a Northland pocket beach. Have we mentioned how much we like this part of Aotearoa?

A few kilometers later, we were sitting at Helena Bay for an early afternoon tea break. This is also where we checked in with each other, and our feet, to make sure we were ok to walk the remaining 12km of road to our hoped-for accommodation.

Our feet agreed to the plan, so we set off. This was the worst weather we encountered over the past coule of days, with the rain getting heavier at times, and and other times being whipped into our faces with a rising wind. At other times, we were just left walking in our raincoats in 90% humidity as the rain backed off periodically. But we safely navigated this road section to get to this backpackers for the night. It's an absolutely lovely spot, and we immediately regretted not having more than one night to spend here! Definitely adding this to the list of places to come back to. There's a massive common area,  both inside and out, with so many cozy places to sit and relax.

There's also a small army of French Bulldogs, who are very friendly and looking for pets and love. Which we were happy to give, and Vaughan immediately gained a fan club.