Te Araroa Day 10, Waipapakauri Stream to Whananaki

Starting km: 274
Finishing km: 315
km covered today: 41

After starting the day with a climb out of the forest and a good bit of road walking, I had lunch at a nice, remote beach

Followed by a steep climb up a ridge and into some more (this time privately owned [hurray again for landowners who allow Te Araroa walkers access to their land] native bush)

After the bush came a bit of pasture, where I met a group of young bulls.  They made me a wee bit nervous by drawing nearer and snorting whenever I went to open the electrified gate to cross their paddock.  Between this and their vigorously shoving/butting one another around it took me a while to get the courage to go through!

This is NOT where I'd planned to finish the night.  That would be about 8km back, bush camping on (what I thought was) DOC land.  Unfortunately, before I got to my chosen camping spot I passed a sign indicating that I was entering private land where the owners had requested walkers not camp.  So it was either ~3km walk with 150m climbing back to the previous campsite, or press on another 8km to the town of Whananaki.  It wasn't a super easy choice as I'd already walked a looong way today, and sunset was not far away, but I opted for the latter.  I got to the Whananaki Holiday Park around 19:30.  It annoys me to pay for Holiday Park facilities when all I really want is a piece of flat ground, but I'll admit, it was nice to have an indoor kitchen, and a hefty rum and Sprite from the nice Belgian couple whose car and tent occupied the camping spot next to mine