Day 18: Ngunguru to Taiharuru Crossing

Distance Covered: 29 km

Today’s theme was road walking. 21 km of planned, 4 km unplanned, and 4 km of trail. Audio books and podcasts are a real life saver for the road walks. When I did the cross country bike ride a few years ago, I drove myself nuts some days by singing the same song in my head over and over and over again to the cadence of the pedaling. Road walking can be even worse because the scenery moves by that much slower so there’s less for your mind to process. Being able to listen to something can help pass the time and take your mind off pain too.

The first 8 km or so of road was back country gravel roads. It was quite nice, really, with good views, infrequent traffic, and not too steep. This lead to the 4 km of forest trail that had the two big river crossings. The notes said they could be thigh deep and had a lot of warnings about rain and safety. We’ve had some rain lately, including last night, so we were concerned. We told our Cyprus friend that we would wait for her so we could all cross safely.

We showed up to the first one and were surprised to find it was little more than a stream with water to our lower shins. There are athletes that could jump it.

Hmm… Examining the water lines and vegetation, it’s hard to imagine it’s been much deeper for a long time. Anyway, then we went up and over a ridge to find that the second river was even more benign than the first. After crossing it, we enjoyed lunch on the shoals. Hikers behind us approached the crossing and we warned them to be careful and we all laughed about how trivial the crossings were. (We were also relieved).

We all enjoyed lunch together and then it was up, up, up out of the valley before getting to the 13 km of road walking. I’ll fast forward through this part and just use a couple of images..

The final part of the day was an estuary crossing. The notes said not to attempt the final crossing near high tide, but that was okay since we were headed to a hiker friendly bed and breakfast just before it. The notes also said to skirt the river and follow the Mangrove forest around. We found, though, that we kept getting pushed further and further inland with the rising tide. Soon, we were pushing through head-high grass and mucking about in mud, looking for a way through.

We were forced to turn around about a km in and take a 4 km road option instead. (We heard later this evening that others faced the same problem.) Those wacky, fun-loving trail notes!

We finally made it to the Tidesong bed and breakfast around 8:30, which is quite late for us. A quick setup and dinner later, we are in bed. We will meet the hosts tomorrow, who can also take us across the estuary at high tide on their boat.