Day 44: Mangaokewa River to Tiora Shearer Station
Distance Covered: 33 km
The rhythm of the trail beats chaotically regularly. We left our great little campsite ready for a long day. It was around 12 km to get out of the river track area and we were determined to just get through it, expecting more bad trail similar to last night’s showing.
Because the trail is sentient, it sensed our determination and called in the rain. Off we went, on the whack job of a trail somewhat cut into the side of hills, rain pouring down.
How many different ways can we try to explain sketchy trail? If you think of another one, then just imagine that we wrote about it. Your imagination must include slippery clay, 60 degree or more slopes being traversed, missing trail, tramping through collected water, and building disbelief about the overall quality. But! There were also incredible sections where the hills flattened for a short while, the forest was pine and broadleaf, and the greenest, softest grass was underfoot. So imagine that too. So nice.
The trail continued, oscillating back and forth between head scratching and admiration. It ended a few hours later in a white pine and eucalyptus forest. The pine was incredibly tall and majestic. No pictures could do them justice. We felt like ants.
We ate lunch just on the end of the trail and prepared ourselves for… wait for it… 32 km of road walking. Whoooo!
There are nice things about road walking. Usually you aren’t worried about serious injury, it can be fast km, and the scenery is more open. The dirt farm roads, in particular, can be quite nice. And that’s what we started on.
For a while anyway. Then it was time for the hard pavement. On and on we went, winding around the hills. We stopped for water at one ditch under the road and cleaned our socks and shoes of all the mud we collected on the river trail and then filled our water bottles. That was refreshing. A woman drove by and asked us if we needed help. "Oh, no, thank you. We're just sitting on the side of the road washing our clothes in the ditch." Ha!
Otherwise, it was hours and hours of plodding along, staying out of the way of traffic. We couldn’t listen to podcasts either because power is at a premium during this 7 day stretch. It does force us to talk to each other about “real” things so there is value in that.
We stopped for dinner at 6 and contemplated our next move. The main highway was a couple of km ahead and was about 8 km of walking. If we ate dinner quickly, we could do the 10 km or so, get back to dirt roads and find a place to stealth camp. Otherwise, we could try to stealth camp this side of the highway. (There was no expectation of camping along the highway.) After going back and forth, we decided to go for it. Do all the kilometers! We wrapped up dinner, threw our packs on, and began the march to the highway. We had made it about 500 meters, full of determination, when Wayne pulled up.
Wayne was in a white truck and said that he was the manager for the Maori Tiora land we had been walking past all day. He said he saw us walking and wanted to invite us to stay at the sheep shearer’s dorms for free. Before we said anything, he said there were toilets and showers and, it so happened, we were 20 meters from the entrance.
Showers, toilets, no stealth camping on the side of the road, and free you say? Feelings of hard determination to march the highway gone. Feelings of gratefulness and elation are the new thing now. Thank you, Wayne!
We walked through the gate and he said that the shearers are so fast nowadays that they don’t need a place to sleep anymore. So the dorms (which look like a one story, no name motel you’d see in a small town) usually sit empty. When he and his wife see hikers late in the evening he jumps out and invites them to stay.
He showed us around the place, also explaining that the Maori council here owned about 10,000 acres on which they ran cattle and sheep from the beginning of their lives to the end. He was very familiar with the trail and he was broadly supportive of it. And then he ducked out wishing us a good night.
So we ended earlier than we could have. We still got 33 km in. And we don’t have to setup or take down our tent. We should be able to get out early, make it the remaining km to the start of the next trail, and maybe bring down the 7 days to 6.