The Blissful Hiker wakes up on Pakiri Beach and heads right back into muddy bush where she meets two young people, then two more, who give her some very good advice.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Poema del Pastor Coya by Angel Lasala as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
The Blissful Hiker wakes up on Pakiri Beach and heads right back into muddy bush where she meets two young people, then two more, who give her some very good advice.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Poema del Pastor Coya by Angel Lasala as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
Sunrise over the South Pacific, not a bad way to wake up in my camp spot in dunes on Pakiri Beach. I delay in the warmth, hoping the sun will dry the dew. No such luck. Once I open the thermarest valve, game is on wet or not, and it means time to pack and get going.
I take a selfie as a way to look in a mirror I don’t have with me. I don’t like the face I see, wrinkled and saggy, but I console myself with what my body can do.
I am now on stage two of ten and I’m ready for a break to repair gear and repair myself, but that’s still days away. I try to focus on just one step at a time, to be present in this moment without an eye towards the zero day – or days – awaiting me.
The beach is pristine and empty except for a bit of harestail grass I carry out on my shoe and one awaiting surf board. Mist rises in the distance, ghostly white in the hot sun.
It’s been a steady diet of beach and bush and I’ll be away from beach for a few days now – but just as I go I see a public toilet – ah! and water and soap. Ah! The small pleasures of life. A couple asks me what I’m doing and ensures that I’m taking lots of pictures along the way. They’re surprised it’ll take five months to walk all of this and wish me well.
A beautiful marine biologist named Lucy comes to her gate to fill my water bottle adding big weight to my pack before a big hill. She warns me it’s steep up Te Hikoi Ote Kir towards Mt. Tamahunga and there’s lots of mud. That’s ok, I’m an expert with mud now. So it’s steady and slow I go, up mostly on slippery grass.
Going slow makes me think of life and its seasons, how nothing can be rushed. You can’t pull on the shoots to make them grow faster. I stop and have some of the water I carried here. The Tamahunga trail takes me along a ridge with a view to my camp spot far below on one very long beach.
My mind, then my body, wanders right off the track, so I rewind to a narrow, mud filled slope that looks best walked while doing the splits. A saddle lined with sharp gorse takes me into the Omaha Forest, and everything immediately changes to bush and bird song, silver ferns daintily revealing their undersides – and ten chatty weekend hikers more interested in arriving than seeing this stupendous view. But they’re friendly and excited to be here, taking my picture before heading back.
A solo Tasmanian hiker who has to be in her 70’s is also hiking the Te Araroa all alone. Sadly, we don’t click as she pontificates more than listens, so I walk on into the bush, climbing hand over hand up a muddy and slippery section that opens to a helicopter pad and views for miles.
The trail is steep and slick, up and down through bush. Furry fiddleheads, larger than my fist, spring up out of the fecund ground. I’m thrilled it’s not raining. Two hikers pick their way carefully down through a particularly awkward section and I see one is trying to avoid the worst of the mud. “Aw, you just gotta go through it!”
The long haired blonde turns around and smiles at me, urging me to go first. She’s French, named Lydie and has the cutest, dimpled grin that makes her appear up to no good. Her partner is a red headed German named Stefan, his head and beard shaved close, his backpack enormous. As I pass, I notice in the side pockets two bottles of Heineken. I like them already.
The trail spits us out onto a road which I dutifully walk facing traffic on the right. Lydie leads the way catching up to me, but refusing to walk with me, seemingly not out of spite, but more because she simply doesn’t want to be inconvenienced to cross the road. I take their picture marching along, self sufficient and content. Behind them is the huge hump of beautiful Kawau Island gleaming in the Hauraki Gulf, a prized bit of real estate that was fought over by Maori for centuries.
Lydie is only 24 but wise for her years. She knows herself well. I’m impressed that she wants to give this hike a try while here on a working/tourist visa. She tells me she hitches the boring parts and moves extremely fast, so we’ll likely lose each other soon, but I admire that she is comfortable with who she is and with what she wants, refusing to be afraid of anything.
We pass a house of barking dogs and a fence festooned with dozens of discarded boots, then leave the road for the Dome Forest, another slip-n-slide advanced tramping track. The sign tells us it’s 2,435 kilometers to Bluff and I decide then and there that these last days of solitude have been special, but I’m going to bring it to an end and walk with these two. I feel affection towards them and besides they intend to push all the way to the famous Dome Café before it closes at 5:00. I can almost taste that burger with everything and a large thick shake.
We move fast through the bush. Let me tell you, this is really hard walking. Steep up and steep down in the deep gumbo, huge twisting exposed roots, a vine-and-downed-trees obstacle course. We leap from boulder to boulder over Waiwhiu Stream then meet a forest track that takes us up again to another muddy trail.
We fly through the bush and I’m amazed not only that I seem to have mastered epic mud and wildly steep trails, but that my ankle is fine and I can move as well as two hikers less than half my age. But no matter our speed, there is absolutely no chance we’ll make it to the café.
So we decide to set up camp here in a wide grassy spot right on the track, with non-biting house flies just a nuisance, and no view whatsoever. There’s no water here, but it’s just a half kilometer back to the rocky river crossing where I clean off the mud from my shoes, splash my hair and body and give my tired feet a chilly soak.
I lope up the hill in my fake crocks, Lydie and Stefan set up and a small flat place reserved for me. Lydie gives me her dimply smile, looking at me sideways. At first I wonder if they spied me stripping bare to take my bath in the stream.
“We waited for you to have a beer.” I nod and smile back. “We waited, because we didn’t carry two bottles, we carried three!
Friends, let me tell you, no beer ever tasted better.
I’m up and out early. Exotic birds becoming friends wake me. It will be a very big day to get all the way to Puhoi, a tiny settlement on the Puhoi River, a word that means slow and sluggish and an apt name. Maybe if I get a burger after this big mountain climb, I can make that happen.
The tent is damp – I’m damp – but I feel relatively clean, the feet still managing to move well. Not fast, but fast enough.
Why is it that a kind act, like sharing a beer, gets me all panicky? All the upset of my life bubbles of my pores as I use the thru-hike to work whatever it is I need to work out. It’s hardly an escape, more a coming to terms.
I leave before the others, knowing they’ll catch me as I walk slow savoring the morning sun, fuzzy in the mist through remu, kanuka, hinau, and pigeon wood not to mention so many tree ferns.
I’m overcome by the compactness of all I need on my back and that my legs keep taking me where I want to go. I’m entranced by the morning. I come to a young kauri forest, tall and straight, a jigsaw puzzle of gray/brown bark, opaque green lichen and vines creeping to the canopy.
The two Finnish pass cold as ice and don’t acknowledge me as they move quickly past. Are they enjoying this, I wonder? Trail runners bound by in bright colors, with bright smiles. I spy the dome ahead as well as the highway, raucous even on an early Sunday morning.
A wooden platform is set up to keep walkers off the roots of the kauri giants. I say a greeting to these lovelies from our California redwoods. When I get to the next summit, I can’t help but think of Bill Bryson describing the Appalachian trail through Georgia of just forest as far as the eye can see with no variation, just green wave upon green wave, forest I’ll walk through eventually.
A Dutch couple crashes in on me and tells me ‘real’ view is actually further along. It’s beautifully cleared with a wooden platform landing. Here the track changes immediately from advanced to easy tramping track on stairs. A sign warns those coming up that the next section should only be attempted by people in good physical condition and with good footwear.
In contrast, the stairs can be managed in heels. I skip down two at a time, blissfully taking full strides that lead me to high calorie food
Signs ask us to remove our muddy shoes before entering, but everyone is cheery and I order the deluxe lamb burger, with egg, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and beet root, plus chips and an extra large thick shake. Breakfast of champions.
Floris and Marjolein left their jobs in Utrecht to hike the TA. They’re laid back, taking things as they come. We stuff ourselves and try to figure out the plan from Puhoi. The official “trail” goes down the river to the ocean and requires renting kayaks. But the tides are not on our side. I call one rental company, and they’re out of business. Another is too busy and the final one, closed.
But being around these two, mellows me out and I relax and enjoy my burger, figuring the trail will provide. Floris gives me good advice that he received from another Dutch Te Araroa walker - simply enjoy each day, no rush – and don’t worry since things do tend to come together.
Stefan and Lydie show up and we crowd around a table on the veranda. Just as I’m ready to leave, I get a text from one of the rental places. Meet tomorrow at 4:30 sharp at the Puhoi car park. I text them back that it’s five going now and that seems to be just fine.
It’s up and over and back in farmland. Cows come when I whistle a complicated, atonal piece of music. A man pops his head over a fence to offer more water before I walk through a Get Smart series of gates.
The weather changes as clouds move in. I can see rain off in the distance but nothing on me yet. A NOBO, or northbound walker, passes me all smiles. Over this top, the view opens back to the sea, then right back into bush, huge ferns layering the path.
I come to an area controlled not only for die-back, but also for goats, though I see none so they must be well in hand.
It’s down and down between farm fields giving way to homes, but nowhere near town. Instead, after 20 miles walking, it’s back up – and up – stairs, thankfully, but my thighs are burning, my feet ready to give up. But these stairs take me into some of the finest bush I’ve seen yet. It’s a well tended and easy tramping track through palms, kauri and all I’ve come to know up close.
And it’s not the mud of the Raetea forest, not the winding up and down tripping hazard of every other forest I’ve walked this far for kilometers’s on end, rather it’s a soft landing to this wonderful day just to breathe in. It’s me – the blissful hiker – tramping in New Zealand bush.
My new friends are all here already waving to me from the pub having hitched the last part. I spoil myself by taking a room in the 1879 Puhoi Pub and Hotel. I’m their only guest and they give me the run of the second floor.
What a good day and full of surprises – and a little education about letting things happen from people much younger than me. I take a long soak in a old tub until I prune, then put on a fluffy terrycloth robe provided by the hotel and sit on the covered porch as the rain comes down. I order a beautiful tart, effervescent local brew and homemade clam chowder the music seeping up to my perch from the bar below, it’s hits from my the decade of my birth the 1960’s – and, curiously, all American.