Day 9: State Highway 1 to Puketi Road

Distance Covered: 29 km

After last night’s deluge, we were struggling with whether we should take the next track or take the alternate “wet weather” track. Part of the primary track has you walk several km through a stream. The notes say not to attempt in wet weather and even use bold. As, so far, the notes have displayed a singular knack for understatement when describing challenges, this had us raising an eyebrow. The stream part would not likely be until tomorrow, but we don’t know how long the water levels in the canyon would take to fall.

We slept in, resting from the slog of yesterday, not breaking camp and hitting the road until 10 AM. It wasn’t fun putting on wet and muddy pants, socks, and shoes! We knocked out the first 7 km in short order, though, making it to a little convenience store on the highway.

To our surprise, we found our friend from Cyprus and another couple who are experienced thru-hikers that we thought were far ahead of us. It was fun to compare notes from Raetea. They also said that two guys were on the next section of trail and got rained out in the designated camping area. They decided to abandon the stream attempt, hiked back to the store, and hitchhiked all the way to Kerikeri, bypassing at least two days of hiking. The experienced couple decided to hike in anyways and were going to wait a day or two to see if the stream would fall. Emily and I weren’t so committed to it to wait around, especially with more rain forecast for 24 hours. Cyprus felt the same so we chose the alternate route, which begins with 22 km of road walking along the highway. We did get a hamburger and fries first, though. So good! And, in addition to the beets, they also had cucumber slices on their hamburgers. 

Then off we went along the road. We made a small detour to get water from under the bridge using our filter. Only slightly yellow now! 

We weren’t on the road long before it started pouring with a stiff, cold wind whipping at us. Felt like we made the right decision! Fifteen minutes later the wind died, the sun came up, and it warmed up. Did we make the right choice? Fifteen minutes later, the cold wind and heavy, tropical rain came back. Fifteen minutes later it was an early summer day. And on it went. 

We felt like the total volume of rain probably justified our choice and then we saw the flooded river. In the picture below, the water is coming up to just beneath the bottom of the bridge.

So we felt good. And the cars and semis typically gave us quite a bit of room so we felt safe enough. And the breaks were quite nice when the sun came out. Lots of really great scenery and views as the highway meandered around the hills and valleys.

29 km of road walking is tough stuff, though. Our feet were taking a pounding, smashed between a pack laden body and unyielding pavement. By the end, each step seemed to shoot pain through the feet up our lower legs. As usual, unfortunately, Emily seemed to be fairing a little worse. She picked up a bunch of new blisters and exacerbated the ones she had. She’s being such a good sport, though. She says Raetea conquering Emily can do anything.

We made it to the turn off at Puketi road around 7 and our priority was finding the first patch of grass on the side of the road we could camp at. We saw our Cyprus friend just off the turn off, seemingly on something of a private drive. There was, though, a narrow strip of meter high grass between the road (driveway?) and the fence. Seemed legitimate… We decided to setup together so if one of us got in trouble there would be more to share the blame.

During this time, it had been raining steadily. Emily and I decided to pitch the tent as fast as possible. Right as we pulled the tent out, it went to nearly gale force winds and rain, whipping everything around as buckets of water fell from the sky. Everything got soaked. In the tent, out of the tent, puddles of water were collected in all of it. Then the sun came out again… D’oh! We made an attempt to shake water out with little effect and were steeling ourselves for a very wet night on questionable ground when a red truck pulled up the road and stopped to talk with us…

Out hopped Chris, a thick rugby player of a farmer. He said he saw us out his window and said we could dry out at his place and sleep in his shed. I think the women were a little hesitant, but that sounded good to me I said. He gave us quick directions and left us to pack up our soaked belongings. We threw everything in big bags and walked up the road where he greeted us.

It turns out it was his parents’ house. Dan and Barb warmly invited us in. We were thoroughly wet and smelled… badly. They didn’t care. She had us change into our dry sleep clothes then took everything else and threw it all in the washer. Chris strung rope through their carport roof and hung our tents, tarps, and bags to dry. Dan and Barb then cooked up a big meal with salad, sausages, eggs, and tea.

Of course we protested, but they kept on going about things. They wanted to hear about our hike, commiserate over American politics, and share a little of what they had. We heard all about hunting, the Department of Conservation, and the family and land they had nearby. They sacrificed for decades to get where they are. It was quite amazing to hear it all.

Then, when it was time for bed, they showed us to bedrooms with beds. Emily and I were shown a queen size bed with thick quilts. We thought we would be in a shed, which was great for us, but they wouldn’t hear it and said it was much too rainy and cold to put us out there.

So here we are, 180 degrees from where we thought we would be just a couple of hours ago. We are dry, full, and blown away by the depth of generosity of this family. Simply unbelievable. We had thought we might be missing a beautiful part of New Zealand by bypassing the river canyon. We think we found a big part of New Zealand’s real jewels tonight, though.