On day fourteen of the Te Araroa, I wake up to an estuary reflecting sherbet colors – lemon, peach, raspberry. I’m in Whananaki, a Maori word that means “kicking,” the kind of restless kicking one does in the middle of the night to keep mosquitos and sand flies from biting. But I slept ok, in spite of a long night of partying across the road from my free camping.
But now, before the sun’s up, it’s absolutely quiet accept for the shore birds and it’s the longest footbridge in the Southern Hemisphere to be crossed. Built on wooden stilts and covered with wire mesh, it crosses the Te Wairahi Stream, a tidal estuary separating Whananaki North from Whananaki South.
As soon as I reach the beach, I realize I’ve missed the trail so attempt an overland shortcut. A man pokes out of his house and yells, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?!” I tell him I’m just a bit lost and he points to the gate urging me to get a move on. I smile, apologize and wish him a great day to which he says, “No one wants to get lost!”
Ain’t that the truth.
To be honest, I am not a fast walker – just someone willing to walk for many, many hours. I set goals, I “get there,’ but I like to see things, take photos, write while I walk, and talk to people.
No one’s out now, just me and the surf and the birds. A sign tells me to help protect shore birds by not letting dogs roam – also that the New Zealand dotterel is the largest dotterel in the world. The sand is more mud than sand, squishing under my feet. Dinghies rest at the water’s edge as heron’s stalk their prey on long stilts.
At Sheltered Bay, there are no tracks in the sand but mine. And the smell is so different from the pungency and almost menthol-like cleansing odor of bush. Here it’s briny, I can practically taste it.
The trail turns away from the beach up a hill. Right before I leave, I notice a farmer has left bottles of water for us TA trampers to transfer into our own bottles. I wonder what they think watching us pass each day. There are about a 800 of us walking the Te Araroa this year, I guess that includes section hikers and those who skip the roads.
I gain altitude on easy track, looking down through gnarly pohutukawa toward private beaches. In a month, these will live up to their common name as New Zealand’s Christmas Tree when they’re covered with frothy red blossoms. The trail bends in a U-shape for a stream filled with masses of Arum lilies. The white funnels are actually a leaf. The flower is that proud stiff yellow sausage poking out.
Eucalyptus trees spill down the gullies. Native to Australia, they take off here in ideal conditions. Cows block the path. One big black matriarch has a growly contralto, not at all happy to share her space. Others just can’t be bothered, leaving large pats as fast as they graze. A fantail dances in front of my path, opening and closing its feathers in a kind of bird form of twerking. Insectivores, those fans work to their advantage, and they can catch their meals mid-flight. Right now, she’s working to attract the ones I’ve flushed while moving my feet.
I pass lots of private property with “no beach access” signs. This is how the rich live, but no one owns this view and it’s all mine this morning, past bush to the Poor Knights Islands, an uninhabited marine reserve.
Big Blackie follows me up the road her brow furrowed. Guard Cow, I now call her, is sending a message to stop looking and move on. And I do, arriving at a flat spot above Sandy Bay where I set up Olive Oyl to lean against a gate and eat my 70-cent Fantastic Noodles with a view of turquoise waves on white sand, bush growing on humpy headlands. Have I mentioned I am happy as can be with long sleeves and long pants. No “Whanananki” for me as the sand flies start coming out. Now where is that little fantail when I need her?
A trio comes past me on their way for a day hike of what I’ve just walked and ask if I’m hiking the Te Araroa. “All of it?! Good on you. Enjoy each day, then.” I promise I will.
It’s one bay after another today, up and over, then back onto the beach, this one full of people on SUPs. There’s also free camping here and I think how maybe California was fifty years ago. The tide’s coming in over my squishy steps, but the air is silky and cool, even in the sunshine. I meet lovely Kiwis who take my picture and then burst out laughing at my endeavor to walk New Zealand end to end. They invite me to stay with them tonight, far off trail.
At Whale Bay signs ask if I have a plan in case of Tsunami. I consider it as I turn down the Morrison Track. I pass the pretty, boxy houses of Matapouri and swampland before heading back up into the bush and a kiwi sanctuary. They’re nocturnal, so all tucked in just now. Someone thoughtfully cut stairs into the clay bank down the ravine. Likewise back up into a forest of kauri. Still, I’m sweating.
The forest is so dark and peaceful. I wonder why not every kauri was taken down in the last century. Perhaps it’s too steep. I hear rustling near a fallen tree ahead and meet another solo female TA thru-hiker from Hong Kong with a towering backpack. Tracy smiles and toddles on, clearly on a mission since she passes Tane Moana, a short spur that takes me to the largest Kauri I have ever seem. Tall and fat with large branches high up as though out of shape arms, ones that seem to reach over me with a blessing.
It feels so good, the air, the birds, this magnificent tree and I have only a few more kilometers until I will meet a boat at the next estuary and stay the night on the other side.
Oh no! Out of nowhere, my left ankle rolls over my foot and I am down on the ground. As a person who loves sound, that was one superb, bone-crushing crack. Was that my bone? My trip is over! Maybe. I reach down to touch the foot and there’s no visible break. Very gently, I stand up, putting the smallest amount of pressure on the foot. It hurts, a lot. But, miraculously, I can walk. So, what was that sound?
It turns out a branch went up my pants, caught hold and ripped clean through front and back, sending me flying down fast like I was on roller skates.
Well, there’s not much I can do I’m but keep walking. Carefully, easy. Down the hill towards a road, then just a little bit of road to Ngunguru, where a whole array of gnome lawn ornaments welcomes me and a little store sells me ice cream. I meet Tracy again and we walk down the street to stairs, an orange trail triangle helpfully pointing to the water’s edge. My foot is swelling up and feels bruised. Maybe I should just stay here, I think.
Right across the road is a place advertised in the trail notes for accommodation. I knock on the door and Cheryl answers telling me they no longer take in guests. But after one look at my ankle, she follows me out with an ice pack, and Ace bandage and a jar of arnica.
James arrives in his boat and we roll up our pants to walk in the mud for the short, fast ride to Nikau Bay Camp. I take an outdoor shower and wonder what to do next with my foot getting fat and uncomfortable. Fastidious and controlling, James refuses to discuss anything until his briefing at 8:00. So I wait, putting my foot up, rubbing arnica on it and finally wrapping it tightly, hoping it doesn’t get too puffy.
There’s about five of us here, no one particularly concerned about my ankle. Bram and the kayak boys are here too, but we don’t talk at all and I feel sad remembering how bad they made me feel racing ahead and never looking back as we kayaked the Waikare Inlet.
There’s really not much to the briefing at all. We gather around James’ map and he shows us the alternate trail through private Maori land – at a charge of $5 each – followed by wading a waist deep river. When the briefing ends, James makes a quick exit and I’m forced to hobble after him. “Say, James, on account of my injury and all, can I stay here tomorrow?”
The answer is an unequivocal, “no.”
OK, then. But he quickly assures me it’s not a long walk at all to Tidesong, where another family takes in hikers in their garden.
It’s been two weeks and I’ve gotten conjunctivitis and, well, a minor sprain. Here’s hoping – hobbling? – that the new week is a better one.
I’m not better, by any means, but I’m no worse and I have to move on, so I pick my way slowly and deliberately through scrubby lowland and lots of invasive prickly gorse. The track is wide and thankfully, they stay on their side.
In no time I reach the wide Horahora River near its mouth into the Pacific. I crunch over pipis and tuatua shells following sunken looping v-step tracks, until they disappear into the estuary.
The water is cold and soon up to my crotch, the tide pulling me upstream. Bram and the kayak boys catch up and I’m surprised how timid they are picking their way across, seemingly afraid to get wet or yanked under by the current. We pass without speaking and I think of what the couple said to me yesterday when I told them about it. “I’m a man and even I know there are a lot of guys who are jerks!”
The fact is I should have just spoken up – and probably been nicer last night rather than expecting them to approach me. It’s actually one of my worst faults, that rather than confront directly, I triangulate, seeking validation for my feelings from people who aren’t involved. Rather than relieving my feelings, I relive them.
Just as I come out of the water, the path goes directly through mangrove swamp, mud way over my clean ankles and shoes, and a lot like the Raetea Forest only deeper and smellier. It’s up and over towards another estuary, timing my cross for the tide. It’s too deep now, so it won’t be until tomorrow morning that I can get over. This is the awkward part of Northland, that the tides are specific to each place, varying greatly even when only a few kilometers apart.
Here, the tide is out and I need to walk closer to breaking waves in order to walk on hard as concrete sand. Oyster catchers and a symphony of screeches greet my arrival on the wave scarred sand. Millions of pipi shells give a lovely crunch to my step.
A few years ago, I joined a friend for a week of scuba diving in Roatan, Central America. I am inexperienced and was very nervous, but my friend has hundreds of hours of diving so stayed close as we would let the air out of our buoyancy compensating devices and slowly sink below the surge into a different world.
In time, and with his help, I became more comfortable and started to really enjoy this Caribbean idyll. One morning, before setting out for a long day of diving – and in front a boat full of divers – the divemaster told me people had complained about me, saying I was hogging the ocean and not letting them see enough.
I was devastated. My friend said it was bullshit and it turned out to be one very sour woman who complained who wasn’t enjoying herself as much as me. But my mistake was in not immediately addressing the issue. I didn’t fight. I didn’t flee. Instead, I froze, trapped in the unfairness and my hurt. I tried not to let it color the rest of my adventure, but I failed and just wallowed in my feelings.
I arrive at Pataua North and spy a picnic table under a spreading tree next to the bay. For brunch it’s more 70-cent "Fantastic Noodle" mixed with a packet of tuna. Lisa and Don walk by and chat me up curious about this trail and telling me they see loads of backpackers come through.
I phone Hugh at Tidesong to come and pick me up at the reserve just out of town, where I’ll continue the trail tomorrow across the estuary. He finds me on the road in his van. I go to open the side door to put my backpack in, and who’s inside but Bram, Tracy and the kayak boys. I just have to laugh. I guess it’s time to give it a rest, Al!
All five of us head to Tidesong, a rambling house and gardens overlooking the estuary out to the Pacific. Ros brings us tea and Christmas cake and tells us about her own adventures walking the trail last year. I finally relax in to the warmth of this lovely moment. One of the kayak boys, who calls himself “River,” shows me that he’s wrenched his knee and it’s wrapped tightly now. Tracy lifts her pant legs and reveals a constellation of nasty sand fly bites scratched to bleeding. I hobble in closer to share my swollen ankle in this trio of casualties of the Te Araroa. Ros takes our picture, smiling like old friends.
The four of the hop back into Hugh’s van and he takes them back to the estuary and across in his boat since they plan to move on today. But I stay in this magical place. The only guest sleeping in a little tree house with an outdoor shower, my clothes rinsed out now hanging in the sun on a fence, even the inside of my sneakers rinsed of their gumbo.
We share a huge meal of leftovers from their daughter’s birthday party and talk late into the night. Ros tells me she walked the trail to raise awareness for kidney donations, since she herself gave hers to her husband Hugh when he fell ill. I’m impressed, and doubly so when she tells me she walked it at the age 66.
Transformation coach Barbara De Angelis says, “The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.” I didn’t arrive on this trail whole and perfect, I came “as I am” and that means everything that happens is filtered from that perspective. My goal was to find out what would happen to my body, mind and spirit on a long distance thru-hike.
Well, body is hurt, but really just a bad bruise. The mind made a good choice to walk a short day and rest. And, the spirit? Funny, how seeing the boys again was like a second chance to make a different choice, to forgive a little for perhaps just dumb behavior from lack of experience rather than something personal, and to start over again on a different foot.
Oh, maybe I shouldn’t put it quite like that. Anyway, you know what I mean.
