Nov 6, 20196 min read

Day 2 Twilight Beach to Maunganui Bluff

Part One

Despite my tent placement strategy, I didn’t get much sleep. I usually don’t on a new trip until maybe the third night (when exhaustion kicks in!)

The wind howled, the temperature dropped and the moonlight was bright (which turned out to be a blessing actually because my headlamp packed it in). My sleeping pad and bag kept me very comfortable and warm. I just couldn’t drop off though. My head was full of the days to come.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, with my face just centimetres from the tent wall, a brown face poked in at me and little paws poked at my tent. Hello possum!

I had debated whether to bring my pack, or at least my food bag into the tent with me. I’m glad I did. Receiving little for its effort, the possum headed off to another tent for easier pickings.

I was up bright and early, had an OSM bar for breakie, and fired up the gas stove for a quick coffee.

I was eager to get moving. My hip had been a bit achy through the night and I knew today was going to be a big one. 28kms along the open beach, on sand, in full sunlight and wind to the next camp site, with no freedom camping allowed in the dunes. I wanted to get an early start in case this section took me all day to traverse. I didn’t fancy walking in the dark or having to wait out sections until the tide ebbed.

I took some time to pack well though and shake out my tent. I discovered that I would need to repair it. It is an awesome tent, a zpacks plexamid. At 430 grams, it is a really sweet tent made from dyneema composite fabric. The plexamid sets up with one hiking pole and pegs and gives me enough room to sit up, lie fully stretched out and have my pack inside. It’s a ripper. Except... that is exactly what happened to it. When nz customs pulled it out for inspection in their back room at the airport, the short struts forming the peak structure that provides that head room somehow broke. When the tent was returned to me, I put it straight back into my pack and kept going. The broken shaft rubbed against the tent and made a small tear. Easily repaired, still annoying.

Anyway, off I went. The first section for the day takes me, yes you guessed it I’m sure, over a series of ridges, along Scott Point, for about four kms before the drop down to the beach which is quite steep.

I walked for a while and then crossed Te Paki Stream. It was fairly shallow so I didn’t get very wet. The dunes along this section are high walled and at high tide, the water comes right up to the dunes in some sections. This is another part best walked at low tide or you can find yourself scrambling to the top of the dunes to escape the waves and then having to walk along the soft sand.

Walking south with the ocean on my right was doing my head in. I’m an East Coast Australian so it was a little disorienting. It was great though knowing that unlike north Qld where I’ve been living for the last few years, there was zero chance a croc was going to launch out at me. Such a great thing about hiking in New Zealand. Nothing in nature was going to kill me or eat me.

My hip was struggling and I was in a fair amount of pain. My strategy to deal with this was to stop every hour, stretch and rehydrate. After 10kms on the sand, this strategy wasn’t holding up and I was dropping my pace.

I plodded along until I realised I was going to lose the time race. At this point I was only 17km into this stretch and I was coming up against fatigue, a really dodgy painful hip and a looming high tide. Walking above the dunes was going to decrease my pace even further. I was faced with my first problem.

I sorted through my options.

Keep going, be mindful of when it started to get dark and against official advice, camp in the dunes and head off again the next day.

Or do I call it for the day and hitch out to the road, camp, stretch and rest up and then hitch back in the morning?

I was really aware of my promise made just the day before to the Ancestors. I decided I needed to respect the land and hitch out.

Okay. Not ideal on day two of a 120 day hike but a solution I can live with. Hike my own hike right?

The problem was though that despite seeing dozens and dozens of vehicles the day before, driving along the beach and parked up for fishing, I had just hiked for more than five hours and... No cars. Not one. I saw maybe half a dozen other hikers. I saw three off-road tour buses way off in the distance at Te Paki stream. I saw, weirdly, a small group of road bikes, but I had not seen a single passenger vehicle. I plodded along for another half a km or so and off in the distance I saw what might be a 4wd. Or not. Maybe it was a rock.

The beach does weird things to your perspective. You can walk for ages, looking at an object in the distance you are sure is a person and it turns out to be a seagull.

Scott Point looking down on 90 Mile Beach

Part 2

I really wanted to smash the distance and get to the (hopefully a 4wd) object as quickly as I could. I thought for sure they would be packing up because it was coming up to high tide. I couldn’t smash it out though because my hip had developed a weird crunching sensation on every uplift of my leg. It’s hard to smash distance when you are walking like you were created in a lab.

Thank goodness for hiking poles. At least I had traction and some forward movement to compensate for the sideways lurch I had developed.

Oh joy. It was a 4by and not a rock. And it was here I met retired couple Kevin, Denise and their pup Stella. I was bloody lucky time wise (or Ancestors were looking out for me). They were out fishing for snapper with a torpedo and had decided to give it another 15 mins and then pack it in. They were just fantastic. I told them I was a bit broken (Kevin laughed at this and said yes he could see that. He had been watching me lurch down the beach) and I asked that when they were finished, could they drop me at the road. Mate. I tell you. How bloody lucky I am and what fine people Kevin and Denise are. By the time Denise had poured me a cuppa, provided a protein bar for nourishment and we had a yarn about fishing, they had decided they wouldn’t be able to sleep that night knowing I was camped up by the road. I was invited back to stay at their block at Houhora. I offered to pitch my tent in their yard but they wouldn’t hear of it. They were so bloody kind. After they packed up (two snapper, two sharks) they took me touring to their favourite spots. The beaches and bays were so pretty. I felt privileged I can tell you. Here are these two locals, going about their day, and they picked up a dirty, sweaty, broken woman off the beach, showed her around and then took her into their home. AND... They cooked up the snapper for dinner with a fresh salad and new potatoes from their garden, washed down with a NZ white. Kevin went out of his way to also cook up a local speciality, tuatua fritters. Tuatua are a shellfish a bit like large pippies and bloody delicious.

So folks, on day two I didn’t reach Maunganui Bluff nor did I freedom camp out on the road. I spent the afternoon seeing the sights, and the evening with new friends, eating delicious food, enjoying a hot water shower and a very comfy bed. I know it changes back tomorrow but hey, remember the rules. I had to say yes :-)

My heartfelt thanks to you both, Kevin and Denise.