The little things
Mile 480 / KM 773
Pakiri to Whatawhata
Audiobook of the week: 401 by Ben Smith. Very inspiring. This guy ran 401 marathons in 401 days.
I miss: Nothing at all
The past weeks have been 'a bit humid' to say the least. My clothes smell so gross that I feel bad walking past people when I see that they aren't TA-Hikers. There's nothing I can do about it though other than take every shower and laundry opportunity I get which is about every five to seven days. Putting on a smelly and slightly damp shirt every morning is the worst, but I'd rather do that than carry extra clothes since they would end up smelling just as bad after hiking in them for a day. Rosi, Max and I were walking along the beach the other day when a lady asked us if there were any restrooms close by. Rosi pointed in the direction we had just come from and said "Yes there's a toilet and there's showers too!" as if that woman would care about showers.
Other than the smelly shirt I'm pretty happy with the gear. My tent is amazing, my sleeping bag certainly doesn't smell like heaven but it sure feels like it, my rain gear is ultra light and 200% waterproof and my shoes are holding up really well so far. One part of the sole was coming off at one point, so I just glued it back on and I'll keep doing that until they fall apart. I did have a bit of a moment with my pack the other day. It was 7am and I had just packed up all my things and was having breakfast - which in my case is an exciting cereal bar and a breakfast muffin - when I noticed a huge rip at the bottom of my pack. I cried out in disbelief and debated if I should just keep on hiking and hope the rip wouldn't get any bigger or if I should stop and get it fixed right away. FOR ONCE I decided to play it safe. Luckily I was only 2km away from a busy road where I hitched a ride to Warkworth. It didn't take long until I found a lovely seamstress who patched up my pack for free(!) with a big piece of leather. Since I was already in town I splurged on a coffee before I hitched back to the trail. This time it was a young mom and her two little kids who gave me a ride. One of the boys was only a little baby.
I had just started chasing down the rest of the group who were now a couple of hours ahead of me, when an old lady came out of a cute farm house holding a strawberry in one hand and an apple in the other. She asked me which one I wanted and I went for the strawberry. 'Jesus Christ Dom, this is the most boring story of all times' is probably what you're thinking right now, but that old cute little lady and the seamstress who patched up my bag for free made my morning! It's the little things that make you happy when you don't have anything.
On the PCT it was absolutely normal to hike 40km or more a day. We just hiked and hiked until we were exhausted, then had some ramen and an hour later we were off to bed to get up early in the morning so we could do the same thing all over again. I absolutely loved it. Here on the TA things are a bit different. Everyone seems to have their own agenda and idea about what a thru-hike should look like. Some skip all road sections (and there are a lot of them), others skip some of the road sections, some just skip from highlight to highlight and leave out everything in between and some purists don't skip anything at all. It took me a while to be comfortable with the idea of skipping some of the endless road walks since I had not planned on doing that. After having walked a lot of kilometers on the side of a highway I have changed my mind though, and decided to skip some of the more dangerous or boring road walks. At least on the north island. The section from Auckland to Hamilton for example is literally a 3 day hike through suburban towns which I couldn't care less about. I came here to see nature and not to walk past an auto repair shop every couple of minutes so... If someone wants to call me out on that and not call this a thru-hike then so be it. I think I can handle that.
I am writing this while lying in my tent which I had to park directly on trail. Cami, Alex, Fred and I are in the middle of a forest and there was supposed to be a campsite a little further down the trail but we couldn’t find it, so we came back to the only spot we saw that was flat(ish) enough to pitch three tents. There's roots everywhere and one is poking right into my hip. There's also some annoying animal running around the tents which I have decided to not freak out about and to ignore. Probably just some possums looking for food.
We walked along a river and past farmland all day. A couple of angry cows charged after us in the morning and then there was a guy who came running out of his house when he saw me walk past with a home made lightsaber in hand. He was a little out there I guess and he was only wearing his shorts, socks, sandals and a big hat but he was really nice and after talking to him for about 5 minutes he offered me some fresh lettuce from his garden. Again. It's the little things guyzzzzz.
Lightsaber guy in full action.
Roots, roots and more roooooots.
They let us stay behind this bar in Whatawhata. Best bar <3
