TA Day 77

TA Day 77: Wednesday 5 March 2025

Whanganui - Otumaire Freedom Camping

As always when we sleep inside, we can't start early :) So while we got ready we said "see you later" to Lulu and Jules and they went ahead probably an hour before us or so.

This morning we had ice cream as dessert after breakfast because we were too full, and it was too late to have ice cream after the burgers the day before.

As we got going today it was quite windy, but for the moment it wasn't too hot which was nice. We followed a sidewalk close to Whanganui River until we crossed over on a big suspension bridge for pedestrians and cyclists.

Although Kim had told Lukas about the café, he was very surprised when we passed a café just after the bridge. We stopped here to have coffee, milkshake and a pie before continuing. We now had to walk along a bigger road for a few km before turning left onto Whanganui River Road. Now awaited 66 km along this road to Pipiriki, which we would hopefully reach tomorrow evening.

It started with upwards. Up, up, up. Until we reached a very windy "saddle". Here there were some benches, and we stopped for a snack break, but didn't stay very long because of the strong and actually quite cold wind.

It stopped immediately once we left the benches, and soon we were very warm again, now as there was no wind.

Not much else happened today.

Once we finally stopped for dinner, it started to rain, so we kept going instead, and then it stopped. Next time we tried to stop to eat, the same thing happened, but this time we had started eating and there were wraps ingredients everywhere. We really had to commit to finish. But this time it rained even more!

We said hello to a cute cow along the way, and by now the rain had stopped again.

We reached the campsite just before dark, and there we met Lulu and Jules again! We spent some time talking before it was time to crawl to bed, and that's when the oddest thing happened - someone started to have a drum session on the tiny campsite 😂 The campsite was tiny, but we shared it with another hiker, some cyclists and a few people in vans. But that was all. Later in the evening they also started to play music from some speakers, but eventually it got silent and we could drift off to sleep.

Today's:

Distance: 36.33 km

Ascent: 511 m

Descent: 515 m

Tent nights: 44/77

Weather: Sunny and windy morning and cloudy afternoon with some showers