Final thoughts before I start

Less than five days to go now. Since work finished I have been doing various things, some just for fun and to get away from Auckland, and some in preparation for Te Araroa. I was waiting for my final piece of gear to turn up from overseas, my Leki walking poles. They were supposed to turn up between Sep 4 and Sep 9, but the courier tracking website always showed them “in transit”. I didn’t actually realise they’d turned up on Sep 13 until a few days after that. Still a bit late, but at least I have everything now. In fact, the courier tracking site still says “in transit” for them even though I got them a week ago!

Here is all my gear, except for the hiking poles and trail runners:

When deciding where to go for a hike, or even just a trip out of Auckland, I turn to one of my other hobbies, geocaching. If you haven’t heard of that, basically you get given the GPS coordinates of a box that somebody has hidden somewhere out there in the world, and you go to that point and find it. You then sign the log with your username to prove you found it, and log it on the website. One that I wanted to find was this one: The Lagoon, south-east of Murupara. One good thing about this one is that nobody had found it yet, which is relatively rare. You get a bit of kudos for being the first person to find a geocache.

So last week I took all my gear and made the five hour drive there from Auckland. I found the geocache hidden in a tree beside the lagoon, which was great. Geocaching has taken me to many cool places that I would never have visited otherwise.

After this I drove out, and had a quick drive through the nearby town of Minginui. It really was a town that time forgot. Every house in the town of about 100 looked like it was minutes from falling to the ground. The two shops in the town were abandoned. It seemed that every single person in the town was in the park playing a game of cricket. I have a quite loud and very yellow car that you can’t miss, so as I drove past every person in the town stopped and looked at me. The town is on a bit of road that doesn’t go anywhere, so the locals knew I was just there having a look.

My plan was to find a campground and set up my tent for the night. My first option was in the DOC land near the lagoon… I could see it on the map but just couldn’t find it. My second option was a little layby on the side of the road 5 minutes north of Minginui. I drove there and pulled in. There was another car there with one person in it who was just sitting there smoking, and did not have any camping equipment. I drove to the other end of the campground and waited for a while. The other car didn’t move, and I noticed a lot of rubbish around. While I was sitting there, some guys drove into the layby and drove right up to me. “You ok, bro?” and “Nice car eh” I heard. Actually I heard those two sentences a lot while I was travelling down that way… I clearly didn’t look like I belonged. They said they had seen me driving around and wanted to make sure I was alright. We talked for a bit and they said this wasn’t a very good place to camp. They said a better place is the DOC Campground – the first one I couldn’t find. They tried to explain where it was but were explaining it using a lot of local landmarks that I didn’t know and wouldn’t be able to find in the dark. Eventually they drove off and I drove off in the other direction.

I looked on the “Rankers Camping app” which talked about a campsite on Okahu Valley Road which was a bit further down the road, down a real back road in the middle of nowhere. I drove down the road a bit but soon realised my car was not going to make it down this road which appeared to be for 4-wheel-drive vehicles only. I have a 4-wheel-drive car but it has a low clearance and can’t get over any real obstacles. And since it was dark by this point I just set up camp in a piece of land I found with a camping symbol on it. I am not sure if the camping symbol referred to the campsite down the road or where I was, but I couldn’t be bothered looking any further. Even though it was dark, with the full moon and my headlamp I had no problems at all setting up my tent in the dark, which was reassuring. The ground was quite rocky but there wasn’t even a breath of wind so I didn’t need to stake the tent down. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky either and I could see all the stars. I just put a couple of rocks on the ropes and it held up fine. Also it was apparently 2 degrees overnight, and I didn’t feel cold for most of the night except for one brief period where I just put on a bit more clothing. So I feel good with my choice of sleeping bag and other sleeping gear.

I hadn’t camped in those temperatures before, and sure enough because I hadn’t vented the tent fly it was saturated in the morning – despite the fact there had been no rain there was a lot of condensation. I hadn’t opened the back vent and I also understand I should have unzipped the fly a little bit. Oh well now I know. And it was also covered in mosquitos. There was no water or mosquitos inside the tent so the gear once again proved itself in that regard. And in the morning once the sun came up I could properly see where I’d actually camped. It was a beautiful spot, eerie with all the morning mist.

I am going to have to learn how to stop my tent getting wet though. At least while on the trail it should be warmer at night most of the time, so maybe there won’t be so much condensation.

I spent some time in Rotorua to relax and unwind (and stayed in a motel). I forgot how stinky Rotorua is.

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Today I wanted to try out my hiking poles, so once again I looked for a geocache that looked interesting, and I found this one – Challenge Track in the Hunua Ranges. It hadn’t been found in over six years, which is very rare for any geocache in New Zealand, and even more so for one in Auckland. The track was apparently quite challenging, so I would get a decent go with my poles.

I didn’t realise until I got to the car park that this track actually used to be part of Te Araroa. I’m not sure exactly when, but graffiti at the Repeater Campground suggested that in 2014 it went past here. (side note – please don’t graffiti the huts and campsites. Nobody cares about your silly little messages!)

The signage for Te Araroa was still present but last season the whole section between Manurewa and Mercer was on the road rather than through here. The track I walked on today was open but I think other tracks in the Hunua Ranges are still closed because of Kauri Dieback.

The combination of Salomon Trail Runners and Leki Aluminium Walking Poles meant I had an easy time on the relatively muddy and sometimes steep paths. I was impressed with them, although the poles were vibrating sometimes so I need to make sure I am using them correctly. I’d never walked with poles before this walk. I’ve done snowboarding before but never skiing, so I’m used to balancing with my own body weight rather than relying on poles. It was an unusual experience, but the poles really helped going up and down the hills. I did slip once on the way down a slippery hill, and I didn’t know how to recover from it because I had two poles still stuck in the ground with my hands strapped into them while I had fallen on my butt in the mud. Fortunately nobody saw me struggle to get up… and I did manage to get up, eventually.

I did actually find the geocache! Two people had looked for it in 2014 and 2015, but failed. Nobody had looked for it since then (or at least, nobody admitted to looking for it and not finding it). But when I found it, the paper logbook inside as well as little toys inside it were pristine. If you want to read the full story on that, then go to the geocache listing and look for my log at the bottom from Sep 2019 (the one with the little yellow car).

I thought about staying at the Repeater Campsite, but I didn’t want to be camped away from my car which was in the middle of nowhere. Also I didn’t feel like I would gain anything by camping in another random campground, I’m sure of my tent and sleeping gear by now. And after being in a great mood after finding the geocache, I wanted to go home and treat myself to a nice dinner. So I walked back to the car and went home.

Anyway, that’s probably about it for now. You’re probably getting bored! Unless anything exciting happens between now and the 25th, you probably won’t hear from me again until I’m on the bus to Cape Reinga!