Winging it

17 May

Ocean Beach to Ngunguru

KM 352

Distance: 31km

Elevation: ascent 570m; descent 564m

Steps: 45,300

Time: 8:40am - 5:30pm

Reaching our preferred destination, Ngunguru, tonight would require us to rely on providence; providence of both nature's forces and people's generosity. Without those we would be doing this section in two short days rather than one.

Once again our morning started with this kind of vista which stops us in our tracks each time. We're running out of adjectives to describe the Northland coast.

Two interesting beach-cast objects were in our path. Firstly, a freshly beached, but dead, fish called a piper or garfish. Oddly shaped but they make excellent fishing bait.

Secondly, an abandoned stranded fishing net. Overall, Northland's beaches have been relatively rubbish-free, with only small amounts of plastic visible, and then only occasionally and when you are looking for it. It's hard to imagine pristene beaches anywhere in the world these days, but Northland comes close! So this fishing net was very out of place and startling to see.

Our first reliance on providence was related to the tide times, and also allowed us a later-than-usual start. 10 km ahead of us was the Taiharuru Estuary and the trail requires us to cross it, a section that lasts for 2km. All the advice stated it could only be completed at low tide, otherwise the river would be too deep and potentially swift. 10km takes us about 2h15m and low tide was to be 2:19 in the afternoon; no point leaving camp early if we would end up waiting hours for low tide. We arrived at about 11:30 and enjoyed a long lunch, intending to start at 12:30 and 'wing it' as we went. Estuary mud around the mangrove fringe is sinky, stinky and black. Once beyond that it's a better surface, but our hands, clothes, shoes and poles were covered in it. We also almost each lost a shoe to the esturine mud before both deciding to go barefoot for the rest of the crossing.

 

But we succeeded in crossing and the deepest section was only up to upper mid-thigh despite being 1.5 hours before low tide. Once we reached the other side of the river the rest of the estuary walk was only ankle deep.

We didn't see any stingrays, but we saw plenty of evidence that they love this estuary. The photo below is of an imprint left by a ray as it feeds on crustaceans in the mud. You can make out the shape of the ray made by the darker sediment.

With this section completed we began the next 7km road walk buoyed by crossing the estuary much earlier than expected which gave us a shot of reaching Ngunguru that night.

The section of trail beyond this passes through private property, the owners of which open access to Te Araroa walkers only between October and April. We are outside that season and therefore could not do that 7 km section so we had to do the 24km (!) diversion which was road-track-road. 

Achieving that on the same day meant that we would need to hitch hike the road sections. This small compromise was not only to give us a better chance of reaching Ngunguru that night, but also because it's a narrow and dangerous road. But it was already 2:00 in the afternoon and we still wanted to do the 4km forest walk in the middle. The catch was there were no accommodation options in between. So it was all or nothing. After a short discussion we decided to wing it again, and see how it played out.

We were picked up within 20 mins of putting the thumb out and dropped at the start of the Mackeral Forest Track. We blitzed it in an hour, half the time stated on the sign. (Go go TA legs!) It included this idyllic stream crossing.

Leaving the forest we walked another 3 km of road to get to the main road and we were waiting only 30 min before a Ngunguru local picked us up and dropped us near our acommodation. Legend! Especially because it had just gone sunset. 

We were elated that our risk taking had paid off and enabled us to reach Ngunguru that night. However, we both arived at our accommodation feeling quite exhausted and this particulalrly affected Vaughan's mood because he took an instant dislike to the place and was even short-tempered with the owner, completely out of character for him. The camp was quaint in a basic kind of way, but well overpriced for what it was. At least we had a place to lay our heads, hide from mosquitoes, and charge our battery pack to keep our phones going.