By Elliot

Distance: 12km

Breakfast this morning was glorious. I have never known how much of a luxury toast with butter is until today. We took our time packing up and leaving our accommodation, as the place was nice, cosy and indoors, and it was raining.

Finally, we got out and braved the rain. The day started with some uphill. The way the clouds looked over the wet pine forest made me miss Vancouver for a moment.

We saw more evidence of possums. Usually we pass traps that are empty, but sometimes they are full, like today.

We reached an intersection with Puhoi Road, where I wanted to grab a hitch into Puhoi. We’ve been doing a lot of road walking and I decided that enough is enough: I want to avoid aches and pains that road walking often causes.

The intersection was quiet. As I wrung out water from my socks, three cars passed, all going the wrong way. As I took a sip of water and prepared to start walking the road in defeat, a pickup truck came going the right way. And he stopped for us.

But instead of just giving us a ride halfway to where we wanted to end up today, which is what we were planning, he convinced us that he should drive us all the way there. So we were in Orewa before 1pm, which was perfect time for lunch.

We were at the holiday park before 3pm. Unfortunately, the holiday park isn’t great. The weather is grey and rainy, which would make anywhere you pitch your tent less than ideal. But it’s also next to a loud, busy road, and the campground itself is busy with lots of RVs since it’s a Saturday. The indoor spaces have a strange antiseptic smell, so it’s not great in there either.

One of the good parts of today is that I cleaned my socks. Since my shoes and socks were soaked today, there was no reason not to wash my socks. Instead of having dirty wet socks to wear tomorrow, I will have clean wet socks!