53. Whangarei: Te Whara

Tuesday, April 2: A bit cloudy to begin with, clearing up to sunny an only fairly warm

Tramping: 8.7 km

The Cell Block

Today was the day of the last tramp, so it was up @ 7:30 & breakfast, lunch preparation and the internet all got their turns before I headed for my shuttle. This had been organised late last night with Trail Drop Whangarei – for a section of the Te Araroa path known as Te Whara. Walking time to the pickup location was less than ten minutes, putting all of the equipment on the outside of the pack likewise and just before 9:00 Hannah Ffrost turned up in her van to pick up the only fare for the day, myself.

Drive was about thirty minutes in the direction of the Heads through what appeared to be little holiday villages, quite pleasant. There was one Natural Jetty, which would have to be photographed at some point as one of the series “Jetties” and we were soon in Urquhart Bay for the start of the walk.

There was one rain shower to begin with so I drank some water and used the toilet. With that out of the way I made a beeline for Smugglers Cove where I saw what I think was a rosella or something related (a brightly – mainly green – colored bird that was quite shy). Back-tracked up the hill to find Nikolaus, Juri, and Chris who had been ferried (one of them – the other two had been let out of the car at the crossroads) from Ocean Beach where their camper was now parked.

I left them to see Smugglers for themselves and took off up the steps to Mt Lion, which was reached about 40 minutes earlier than predicted by the Doc sign. A lot of steps, though, and the humidity of the day before was still hanging around in the air, and I was sweating quite a lot.

Slide Show

Then the ridge – steps up and steps down here and a couple of root staircases. Quite wet and a bit slippery but not really much mud. Was at Te Whara fairly soon as well, but there was really nothing there to have lunch on. Also the view were quite unphotographable, due to the haze and sun direction. However a few brackets of the track were attempted without the tripod.

On the way down I mistook the WWII radar station ruins for a dismantled picnic site and sat down for lunch. Was soon joined by the lads (Nikolaus is from Hannover & wants to study biology or chemistry @ LUH) and we inspected the other remains of the station and then discovered the picnic table proper.

Interactive Map

From here on it was downhill over a very open landscape – the forest up to now had been quite spectacular on its, and and then down to the beach I could see a couple of people on boars, but when I got to the beach I could see that body surfing was out of the question. Then waves were far too large and breaking far too far out – although they were breaking very cleanly indeed.

Walked up and down the beach photographing the various participants – oyster catchers and surfers. Eventually time was drawing to a close and I went to the carpark to await Hannah. She was on time and we were soon back in town. In the meantime I had gotten a couple of tips from her in respect to fish’n’chip shops (I made it clear to her that I meant the wrapped-in-newsprint type) and will have to decide which one tomorrow.

Checking my mail I saw that I had yet another cancellation from airbnb (the money I could have made if I had taken all of the penalties!) so tried yet another place. Then set off for dinner.

The last of the lamb shanks – tonight from Traditional Roasts, 63A Walton St for $15 – far too much of everything and the meat was very tender. Too bad there aren’t more of these places.