By Elliot

Distance: 22km

We took an early bus this morning to Bombay, south of Auckland. We didn’t want to walk the section of the trail just south of Auckland, as it is all road walking and passes interesting landmarks such as a sewage works.

A few kilometres into our walk, we ran into a few woolly friends.

We proceeded to the top of a hill, where we stopped for a snack and to sing some Lion King.

It was extremely windy, and it rained on and off most of the day.

After coming down from the hill and a short hitch, we were stopped by a man who offered to drive us into Mercer. It was raining fairly hard at the time, and he said that the section of trail we were about to turn off onto was not great. We thanked him, but refused his offer. Had we gone with him, we would have arrived in Mercer before lunch, and then would have had nothing to do for the rest of the day. And we are in New Zealand to walk both the great and not so great parts of the trail (we do still want to avoid excess road walking though).

We are happy we didn’t take his offer. The weather cleared, and the trail, though flat, was pleasant walking.

We also came upon a unique section of trail. It was not well maintained, and we were slowed by all the trees we had to climb over and duck under.

But what made it unique was the combination of the wildness of the trail, and the fact that it ran parallel to a highway.

Tonight we have our tent pitched behind a pub. It is actually much nicer than it sounds, and there was even a place for a hot shower.