The night in the old hotel hall was interesting. There were a lot of noises, mostly from the wind, rain and traffic, I was glad that I wasn’t sleeping there alone. It had rained quite hard on and off overnight, but was already clearing when we got up. A relatively short day was on the agenda, 17km, so we took our time getting ready to leave. The trail followed dirt roads and through farmland and then into the forest.

It got quite hot as the clouds completely dissipated and we climbed up. We saw our first kauri trees and visited the stump of one that had been cut down a long while ago.

We eventually got to a place where if water is flowing over the road, it means that you shouldn’t go into the next section of trail, which is pretty much a stream walk in a canyon and subject to flash floods. Even with the rain from last night, the water wasn’t quite flowing over the road, so it looks like we should be good to do the stream tomorrow since there’s no significant rain forecast. About a km later, we arrived at our camp for the night. There are quite a few people here again tonight.

We planned to leave at 6 am since someone Caroline met told her that it took them 11 hours. I set me alarm for 5 am and was in bed at 8:30. I managed to get moving at about 5:10 but a half hour later, while Cecile and I were eating, we realised that Caroline wasn’t stirring. Cecile woke her up and it seemed that she’d slept through her alarm. There had been some wierd noises in the night, which most thought were from possums, which have a horrible sounding cry. We didn’t get off until about 6:45, after our first shoe cleaning station, a measure to help mitigate the spread of Kauri dieback. We headed down the track and could see the most rising of the stream in the morning light.

The track soon became a muddy quagmire that we slipped and slid our way down, each taking a spill once.

We made it down to stream and rinsed off and then started the stream walk section, 2.5 km from bank to bank through the water. It was amazingly beautiful and quite refreshing.

The stream ends where it joins the Waipapa river, which the trail crosses. It was quite deep and swift where we were supposed to cross, so we managed to go upstream just slightly and four of us linked together to cross with the water coming up to our bellybuttons. It went well thankfully.

We followed the a trail along the side of the Waipapa and then one of it’s tributaries that was really muddy. We eventually got to a part that was so easy going compared to the mud because gravel and stairs had been put in to again protect the kauris that we were hiking through. Even though we were huffing and puffing up a big climb, the sight of the giant kauris kept me in awe and made it all easier.

The trail would turn back to a muddy mess whenever there were no kauris to protect, but even the mud had it’s own fun to it, it’s very clay-like and thick and gooey and very slippery. After the last stand of kauris, we were spit out onto a dirt road/atv track and it was a pretty cruisy last 9 kms into camp. My favorite day on trail so far. Of course Caroline’s alarm rang at 5:00 pm while we were doing our camp chores.

Day 11 started with some road walking, about 10 km along some dirt roads through farmland. We had some company for a km or so, until his owner cam by in her little farm buggy and picked up ‘Cruise’. I found it a bit strange that we got told off and not Cruise.

We also had our first few of the Bay of Islands before turning off the road and into some fields.

There were stiles that went over some electric fences and I managed not to zap myself although Cecile wasn’t so lucky. We climbed a bit and then descended to the Waimokaikai stream, which we followed to the Kerikeri river. It was lovely and shaded in sections and the scorching hot in others when the trail led away from the trees lining the river. We eventually made it to Rainbow falls, which was quite impressive.

After the falls, it was a short walk into the town of Kerikeri and to the Holiday Park campground. After enjoying a good hot shower and setting up the tent, it was off to dinner at an Indian restaurant, delicious.