TA Day 110
TA Day 110: Monday 7 April 2025
North of Conical Peak - Mangawhai (Riverside Holiday Park)
When we woke up it was raining. Lovely. But not so bad luckily.
We followed the forest road (Govan Wilson Road) down to the tarmac road that was Matakana Valley Road.
Here, the Te Araroa continues along a trail, up Tamahunga, in Omaha Forest. We weren't so keen on fighting with the mud and bush, especially since we had a long day ahead of us, so we decided to road walk instead and follow the Matakana Valley Road, Pakiri Road and then Pakiri River Road, to Pakiri Beach Holiday Park.
We passed some roadworks on the way, and got a personal escort part of the way through. Not so many TA walkers go this way it seems (which makes sense of course) so the workers were a bit curious of us and our walk.
Once we reached the Holiday Park, we bought some snacks and finally sat down for the first rest of the day. We ate crackers and cheese, drank sodas and ate ice cream. It was nice with a snack break.
Then it was time for the beach. Finally a good beach day! Oh, how much we have been looking forward to this! Pretty much every beach before this has been windy and rainy, or both. Now we had sun and we walked barefoot in the sand and enjoyed ourselves.
Halfway through, we started seeing lots of dead puffer fish along the shore. Wonder why?
When exiting the beach we met an Irish guy that knew Swedish. Very random! But funny too. Apparently his mum was Swedish.
Now it was only another road walk in between us and our accommodation for the night. We called the Riverside Holiday Park that we would be staying at. The man who answered seemed really nice, and when we arrived, we learned that he really was! For 40 NZD we got towels, as many shower tokens as we wanted and then he also said that since we arrived "so late" we could just sleep in the common area instead of pitching our tent 😀 So nice!
So we had our showers and then had a dinner made from food we bought from the reception when we checked in. Then we hung out in the common area, watching the movies Moana 2 and The Emperor's New Groove on the TV while waiting for it to get late enough to put up our mattresses in there.
Around 22:00, it calmed down, and we could go to bed without disturbing anyone, and without anyone disturbing us either.
Today's:
Distance: 40.12 km
Ascent: 361 m
Descent: 658 m
Tent nights: 53/110
Weather: Overcast morning, then cloudy with some short drizzle
