By Ruth

Distance: 10km

This morning was very rainy and blustery at Orewa beach. We packed up our tent, the rain and wind making it more difficult than usual. The kite surfers seemed happy with the conditions though!

Today was a fairly short walking day, so we took advantage of it by walking back into the town for breakfast and coffee. We found a really nice cafe where the owner was very friendly and sat down to chat with us for ten/fifteen minutes about our walk and his travels. He and his partner love to travel, often for a year or more at a time. To fund this, they will buy a struggling cafe, work to improve it for two to three years, then sell it and use the profits to take off travelling again.

We lingered for a while over breakfast, because we only had five or so kilometres to walk to Silverdale, where we had our hearts set on having a pie for lunch. Here in NZ, pies are savoury, usually with a meat filling. This one pie bakery in Silverdale, though, is known for its vegan pies! So we thought this was the perfect opportunity for us to experience this cornerstone of Kiwi food culture. We got one vegan and one vegetarian pie. I thought they tasted a bit like a hearty stew encased in pastry. Delicious. Unfortunately the one table at the bakery was in use so we had to use our backpacks as seats while we ate. Didn’t bother us though!

After lunch and a spot of grocery shopping, we headed off to our campsite for the night, the Stillwater Motor Camp. At this point the weather had improved a lot as we walked through some exurbs. We hitched the last 7 km into camp with a very friendly local lady because otherwise we would have been walking on a notorious windy road with no shoulder. We got to Stillwater in the early afternoon and were able to dry out our tent, shoes and socks in the sun.

Later on we walked to the boat club for a beer and chat with some more friendly locals. Then it was dinner and straight to bed, because tomorrow we rise before dawn in order to make a low tide crossing at 6:50 am.