Finishing km: 40
km walked today: 27
The morning of Day 2 began with a walk up and over a rocky point before headed down to Ninety Mile Beach, where we'd be spending the next three days.
Spending the whole day on the beach began to give you some idea of the scale of place. There were two landmarks that we kept seeing all day, first an island, and second the rocky spit of Maunganui Bluff. These illustrated how deceptive walking on the beach can be. They'd often be much further away than they looked (that can't be 12km away!?), never seeming to grow any nearer no matter how long we walked.
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| The view down to 90 Mile Beach in the morning (named before it was properly measured, 90 Mile Beach is actually just over 90km long.) |
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| The sunset over Maunganui Bluff |
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| And behind the dunes, our home for the evening |
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| Campsite at the end of Day 2, Maunganui Bluff. The camp wasn't flashy, and the water needed filtering, but there was flat, grassy ground and even a shelter to cook in! |
Back in the day I used to race the entire length of this beach every year, from where you started on day one to Ahipara in the south.
ReplyDeleteThat island offshore actually has a hole through the middle, when we were racing the course stipulated we had to go out and loop around the island and then back in..... The brave were allowed to shoot through the hole (saving up to 5 min's depending on the swells), but your timing had to be spot on.... get it wrong in a big swell and you'd get mashed into the roof of the cave.
Dave
Hi, Llew. Delighted to have heard from you that there was a part 2 to your wandering blog; I will have to ration myself or there will be no syllabi for my classes this autumn...
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