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**Due to an issue with phone backups at this point of the trail I lost many of my photos from the section up to Auckland. Photos are limited in this post, but I have shared the ones that I managed to recover.**
Today was stacking up to be a much shorter day, about 19 kilometres to Ramarama. I was quite looking forward to the shorter day, and hopefully getting to the campsite tonight a little earlier than normal and having a nice rest.
We’d woken up a little later than normal, just after 6.30AM, and soon it was time for breakfast. Our hosts had put on some cereal and toast with jam for us this morning, and some strawberry yoghurt. It was all lovely, and I really enjoyed being able to have a proper cup of tea again. Paul joined us and we sat around lazily for an hour or so whilst we had more tea and more breakfast.
It was after 9AM by the time we left, and the sun was already hot. Much of today would be road walking and although I knew it would be boring I wasn’t too fazed about the difficulty. It would, I thought, be relatively flat.
Seeing the pain I had been in yesterday with my legs, Julia had suggested I try to cover them up today, and very kindly leant me her long hiking pants. She was primarily hiking in shorts these days with the hotter temperatures, so I gratefully accepted with a small prayer that hopefully they worked!
About 7 kilometres down the road we had decided to stop at Pak n Save supermarket for some lunch. It was Saturday morning and the roads were very busy and noisy. We walked down the main road towards Papakura and the sun was hot. There was nowhere along the road to get out of the shade.
Walking along a busy (read, noisy) road on our way to Papakura.
When I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, we took a right hand turning towards the Papakura town centre which also happened to take us through another little shopping area with a Burger Fuel, Binn Inn and Dunkin Donuts. It was hard to keep walking straight past them!
Hiking down a side road into Papakura town centre.
The first thing I noticed about Pak n Save was that it was air conditioned inside. I grabbed a large trolley so I didn’t have to carry my pack around the supermarket on my back, and we wandered for a little while choosing our lunch and some supplies for the days ahead.
Back in Stillwater, I’d decided I would probably go to Hamilton this weekend to sort out the issues I was having with storage on my phone. But the plan had now changed and now I was low on food supplies.
Craving fresh food for lunch today, we bought a bag of lettuce with some dressing and a packet of ready cooked roast chicken to put in it. I also decided to munch on a rawcarrot to try and get some extra veggies in.
I’d had a small thought that perhaps it was the heaviness of the sunscreen I was using that was contributing to my heat rash, so I decided to buy some new sunscreen that (apparently) has a cooling action as well.
We also decided to grab a lotto ticket on the way out of the shop, because you never know your luck!
We spied a small grassy patch opposite the supermarket, so we made our way across the road. It was a little difficult getting across the road as the traffic was so busy, but eventually we managed.
We sat for a nice long time and enjoyed perhaps one of the best lunches on trail so far. It was really nice to have some fresh food for once, even if I had to try and eat it out of my pot with a spoon!
After lunch we carried on up the road for a little way until I came across a post office. It was a good opportunity to send a few things back home, namely some compostable bags (still have no idea what I’m going to do with these yet), the little trinkets mum included in my last resupply box and my makeshift towel that I don’t need now.
I think my mind imagined this released a lot of weight from my pack, but the reality was there was still a lot in there. Mainly, it was food. I’m never sure how I manage to be carrying so much, but I suppose it might have something to do with eating at restaurants whenever we stay anywhere that has one!
From the pharmacy and post office, it was a long hot walk all the way to Ramarama. We still had about 11 kilometres to cover and it was just past lunchtime now. The first milestone to look forward to was Drury.
It must have taken us a good couple of hours to walk the 4.5 kilometres or so to Drury. It was so hot and humid I thought I might melt. It became a bit of a battle to walk from one spot of shade to another, but there was just so little of it! I don’t remember much of the walk to Drury because I was just so focussed on getting out of the sun.
On top of all of that, my shoulders were starting to ache also. Once again my pack was not sitting very comfortably today.
Finally reaching the town signs marking the entrance to Drury, after the longest 4.5 kilometre hike of the entire trail.
Finally we reached the entrance signs to Drury and I let out a sigh of relief. But it was still another kilometre or so until we were in the town centre. We stopped under a large tree just opposite the Irish Pub and campground. I had noticed some bus stops along the road as we walked in. Just for fun I googled the bus services that ran out here to see if there was a bus to Ramarama. It turned out that the service to Drury was the end of the line, and only went back to Papakura.
A military mile marker post in Drury, erected in 1860, marks 22 miles to Auckland.
I seriously contemplated going back to Papakura and getting on a bus, either to Mercer or even Hamilton. I was done for the day. I had no energy left and the thought of continuing to walk in the blistering heat was unbearable.
But there were no other viable options. Julia forced me to get up and push on.
It was hotter still outside now.
We got about 2 kilometres down the road before I was overcome with a desire to check the temperature (the first time I’ve done so on trail). To my absolute surprise it only showed 24 degrees! If you’d asked me I would have estimated at least 32 or possibly more.
It was at this point I realised what the problem was, and why it had felt so much hotter through the Auckland region as a whole. The heat of the sun is attracted to and then rebounds off road surfaces! This causes an intense heating effect when you’re walking along roads or other paved surfaces, and the heat is constantly being reflected back up at you as well as from the sun directly above. To make matters worse, there hadn’t been a breath of wind all day and there were still very few places to shelter from the shade.
I found myself feeling very grateful for my big brimmed hat, but it wasn’t doing much to take away the brunt of the sun anymore.
We walked and walked. And we walked some more. Even Julia was struggling now. We got to a point where we were stopping every kilometre, or every half kilometre, just to shelter in whatever shade there was. Our pace had slowed to a crawl, and even reaching Ramarama just a few kilometres away seemed impossible.
Julia marches on ahead past the quarry south of Drury.
I gaze out to my right hand side where I can see and hear cars whizzing along State Highway 1.
We passed a quarry and I looked out to my right towards where the State Highway ran. I could see the cars zipping along, and all I could think was, “That road leads home… just a couple of hours and I could be home.” It was absolutely the wrong thing to think, and it didn’t help with my mood at all, but I couldn’t help it.
The last time I’d asked, Julia said we were about 4 kilometres from Ramarama. I was wondering roughly how far we still had to go when she stopped just up ahead under a tree. As we stopped, a ute pulled up on the other side of the road. The man inside asked where we were going. We told him, and he asked if we wanted a lift. We took one look at each other and accepted. It was just too hot for either of us to continue any further.
Our saviour (Steve) pulled off the road and we loaded our packs into the flatbed. Then we hopped in.
As we drove up the road Steve asked what it was that was taking us to Ramarama. We explained about the trail, but told him that we were having an issue confirming a booking with the campsite there. Despite two online enquires from both Paul and Julia, and one phone call from me earlier in the day, we hadn’t received any confirmation that the campsite was still operational (we’d heard rumours it might be closed). Paul was already way ahead of us, but we hadn’t thought to get his number.
Reluctant to be dropped off in Ramarama if there was no place for us to stay, we made a split second decision to go to Mercer. We’d already been discussing the possibility of hitching there tomorrow to avoid a particularly difficult road walk section along State Highway 1. Steve, quite rightly, also questioned why we would want to stay at Mercer. I tended to agree with him… there really wasn’t much there that I knew of and it was right next to the main highway. But we did know that there was definitely somewhere to stay.
Julia quickly pulled up the number for the campsite and I rang it. It rang and rang. And then it went to voicemail. I was frustrated now that we were having such issues finding accommodation. Everybody we’d tried to contact so far wasn’t answering. And we were too tired and heat exhausted to take a risk.
After a bit of prompting from Steve, we considered whether Rangiriri might be a better option. My first thought was of the pub and hotel there, and I was keen to stop somewhere with a half decent meal. But we had also heard through the grapevine that it was closed. Steve seemed to think otherwise, though, and said he’d driven past a few days ago and it was open.
And so the decision was made to skip a large chunk of the trail to Rangiriri.
We spent much of the remainder of our car journey talking to Steve and finding out about his life. He’d just finished up at the quarry for the day and lives in Te Aroha, so I spent some time talking about the Karangahake Gorge and how beautiful it was. Although from Northland originally, he lived in Auckland for a while before moving to Te Aroha. He’d simply been on his way through one day and decided it might be a nice place to live!
Before I knew it, we were pulling off the motorway and parking outside the hotel. Steve dropped us off right outside so we didn’t have to walk very far, and we unloaded our packs onto the steps before thanking him profusely for rescuing us from the heat.
As he drove off, we both looked at each other with uncertain stares. It had been a long section to skip. I was feeling a little guilty about Paul, and hoped he’d been able to find accommodation in Ramarama (knowing Paul as I do now, he wouldn’t have wanted to skip a section of the trail anyway, but more on Paul later).
Julia enjoys taking the weight off her feet at a bench outside the Rangiriri Hotel and Pub.
I sat outside the pub whilst Julia grabbed us a couple of cold ciders. I was absolutely gasping. And the heat was still very strong.
By now, the events of the last hour or so had caught up with me and I was starting to regret skipping so many kilometres. I tried to avoid it, but eventually asked Julia to add up how many kilometres we’d bypassed.
56 kilometres. Even with my previously planned detour to Hamilton, I’d only anticipated skipping 48.
For the first time, I felt like a complete failure. Here I was, out here to thru hike a trail, and at the moment I felt like I was skipping more than I was walking. Worse than that, every time the trail got remotely too difficult for me, it seemed I would take the easy way out.
The largest and coldest cider after the world’s hottest day of hiking.
We ordered some food, staring at the choices on the menu for ages. We’d carried in a lot of food which we needed to eat tonight regardless. But we couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a pub meal so we decided to have a little snack now, and then dinner later. It was about 3.30PM.
We ordered two children’s portions of fish bites and chips. As we waited we were joined by a Māori couple who had just come from watching their son play rugby league in Matamata. They were an absolute hoot, and such genuine people, and it was nice that they sat down with us for a few minutes.
Not long after they left I went to collect our food. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the plates on the counter. They were huge! Each plate was larger than a normal sized dinner plate and full to the brim with chips and fish bites that were almost the size of my palm!
A full-size plate of fish and chips at thte Rangiriri Hotel.
There’s really only one option for accommodation in Rangiriri (outside of the hotel), and that’s with a lady called Cathy who runs the local pie cafe. Her place is very popular with hikers and travellers of all kinds.
As I spoke to her on the phone outside the hotel she tried to explain to me where her place was. Even though she could see me, I was so fried I couldn’t make out where she was, but Julia eventually spotted her.
Cathy is famous for her pies and I could smell them as I went inside her home. There was a little room at the front of the house where she sells them from, and we were beckoned through to the kitchen.
Cathy and a guy named Toby from Australia were sitting in the kitchen. She had just finished preparing some snapper that he had caught today in the Coromandel. I was desperate to get off my feet but we made polite conversation until she directed us to the paddock out back where we could put up our tents.
It was one of the fastest pitches of my tent ever. I was so ready to get in and be out of the sun and the heat! Once the tents were up, we sat in the picnic area next to a cabin Cathy also has on her property and chilled out.
Toby came out to chat to us for a while. We asked him about other hikers that had been through, and he gave us some information. The one which stood out to me was an American guy who had come through not long ago, and who had (apparently) been held up at knifepoint just outside Meremere. It turns out the trail is quite hard to find at one point and lots of people get lost. This guy had been walking for a little way up a private road before he realised his mistake. Then he was approached by the owners who threatened him before sending him on his way. More details weren’t given but the guy had called the police when he arrived at Cathy’s place.
I was already anxious enough about going through Huntly and Ngaruawahia in the next couple of days, and I didn’t need more fuel to add to the fire. It was getting the distinct impression that this section was very unsafe.
After he left I excused myself to call my parents. We talked for a little while and I cried. My legs were still hurting badly, and I was worried about the next section. I was also a little bit homesick. We decided on a new plan where I would go home for a couple of days. It would be a lot less expensive than having Dad meet me in Hamilton, even if it meant risking a bout of homesickness.
After finishing on the phone, I sat back down with Julia to prepare dinner. Neither of us were particularly hungry, but we’d carried in all this food and needed to eat some of it so we didn’t have to carry it out tomorrow.
I somehow completely stuffed up cooking the couscous. I’d decided not to make the whole packet, but I miscalculated the amount of water I needed. To top it off, it tasted pretty awful even though it was supposed to be Moroccan flavoured.
After dinner I chatted to Julia and opened up to her that I wasn’t feeling great. I’m not sure what it was, probably a combination of things, but I had just run out of motivation. I told her what I was thinking of doing when I got to Hamilton, and tried to justify it by explaining my legs needed two days to recover properly. I could see in her eyes she didn’t want me to take that time off, and especially she didn’t want me to go home.
I’d sometimes felt pressure from her to stay on trail or keep walking when I didn’t really want to, but I also know that without that pressure I perhaps wouldn’t have continued as far as I did. There were lots of things running through my mind. I felt like a decent break, for a couple of days, to reset my mind and come back fresh. But perhaps I just wanted an excuse to go home. It had been well over a month now since I’d seen Dad and Tilly, and I hadn’t seen Mum for almost a month.
We agreed I would wait and see what my legs were like over the next couple of days before making any decisions.
As we finished our conversation Cathy joined us. She mentioned that two other hikers were on their way in, which surprised us as it was already past 7PM. She spoke to us about what an amazing thing it was that we were doing and how brave we were for getting up and doing it, especially as women. It was what I really needed to hear after a couple of really bad days and the conversation I’d just had.
It turned out the other two hikers were the German couple who we had met on day one at Twilight Beach, who were carrying huge backpacks! We couldn’t believe it. It was nice to catch up with them again, and I think Julia enjoyed having a chat to them in her native language for a little while.
There were no showers at Cathy’s place so I had a pot wash in the paddock next to my tent. I immediately felt much more refreshed and relaxed.
As I cleaned my pot out, Cathy appeared beside me. I’m not sure if she’d sensed a little bit of my unease or if she just wanted to chat but we had a nice long discussion about why I was doing the trail and how good it was to try to find out what kind of an individual I am. Cathy believed this kind of soul searching is something everyone should do, otherwise we all get lost in what society wants us to be.
Her story is tragic and she is an inspiration. At one point in her life she’d had a multi million dollar business portfolio. During the recession the bank asked her to pay everything back, blaming her age and the fact that she was a single woman. She’d recently split from her husband who’d developed a personality disorder, and she’d suffered a heart attack from the stress. The upshot was that she’d wound up with nothing.
Something had to give, so she moved to Rangiriri and started to build everything again from the ground up. She now says she has the least she’s ever had in her life, but she’s the happiest she’s ever been. It was a message that I found myself coming back to again and again as I continued on the trail.
I thought it might be a cold night, so when I settled down in my tent I wrapped up in two layers. After dozing off I woke up out of a slumber to a lot of light and noise from the pub, the road and Cathy’s house.
Sleep came in fits and starts, and my legs were painful again throughout the night. I woke up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and accidentally pulled the tent peg out of the ground.
As I struggled to get it back in, I looked up and caught a glimpse of the stars. I realised this was the first time I’d seen the stars properly on the trail and for the briefest of moments I drank it all in before heading back to bed.
prefer to watch?
Watch the full video from this section of Te Araroa below.
