Days 28 & 29 – Waipu Cove rest days

Date: 23 & 24 October

On my first rest day I slept in as late as I could, which wasn’t really that late since I needed to pee and the toilet block is a decent walk from my room. Nick and Robert had of course left already. My foot was still quite sore… damn.

So I spent a few hours watching TV shows that I had copied onto my phone before I started the trail. The phone reception on Skinny/Spark isn’t good enough to stream videos and the reception on 2Degrees was usually zero so I didn’t have a lot of choice.

It wasnt long though until there was a knock at the door – it was Ralf. I immediately thought “uh oh” – Ralf was supposed to have left. He told me that he’d walked a fair distance up the hill, about 6 or 7km, then walked back to the camp because his calf muscle is really hurting. He is going to take the bus to Orewa tomorrow. Poor guy, I definitely know how frustrating it is to want to continue but not be able to.

At least I had a bit of company. Ralf said that out of the 11 people he keeps in contact with, only 2 have no injuries. That is a low number.

Later on in the day I was browsing Instagram and I saw that a guy by the name of Eirik had hiked into the camp. I contacted him and with Ralf the three of us went to have dinner at The Cove Cafe again, as it is the only place around. He is from a place 400km above the Arctic Circle in Norway. Sounds cold and dark.

The next morning my foot was a bit better but I could definitely feel some pain still so I decided to take another rest day. It was still windy so didn’t spend much time on the beach. However I did go for a small walk to the top of the little hill opposite the cafe and had a look down the beach. It did make me wonder, how come there was so much road walking to Waipu Cove when the beach here seems to go on forever?

But, like I said to Jeremy while I was walking with him the other day, I trust in “The Creators” – being the people who designed the trail route. I’m sure they have investigated every option to get the trail off the road where possible. Jeremy said at the time he didn’t have as much trust in The Creators as I did.

I spent a bit of time writing down in sequential order all the possible places to camp between here and Auckland. I felt this was necessary because starting tomorrow evening is Labour Weekend, the last major public holiday and three-day weekend in New Zealand before Christmas. Everywhere is likely to be booked, except I would say the holiday parks would still have tent sites. The good news is that between here in Waipu Cove and Auckland, the places to stay are the Holiday Parks at Mangawhai Heads, Mangawhai and Pakiri, and then there are places to camp in the various forests after that. So it seems that places being full won’t affect me over this long weekend… hopefully. And by the time I get to Puhoi, where I will need to rent a kayak, the long weekend should be over and they should have kayaks available.

On rest day 1 I had the Bunk House to myself as nobody replaced Nick and Robert once they left the camp and continued their walk yesterday. But on rest day 2, when I asked at reception to stay another day, I had to move from Room 3 to Room 2 because some people who are starting their long weekend early had booked that room.

Thankfully those people never showed up until 9:45pm so I could rest by myself most of the day. I didnt see or learn about any other hikers staying. I had some takeaways from the dairy and then slept relatively early.

I plan to continue tomorrow no matter what. If it hurts too much, then I’ll go back and rest in Auckland at my house until I recover as honestly these enforced rest days are getting annoying. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt and I can continue on as normal.