Te Araroa Day 32, Mangaokewa River Gorge to the Timber Trail

Starting km: 924
Finishing km: 971
km covered today: 47

Pretty much everything interesting on this day was in the morning.  I really enjoyed the walk out of the gorge.

A lot of people have complained that this section of the track is overgrown, narrow and slippery along the steep side slopes of the river.  It was, but I really enjoyed it.  None of the points where one could slip really placed one in serious danger. If you fell you might land on bushes, twist your ankle and/or be embarrassed, but you certainly wouldn't plummet to your doom.

Aside from nice walking, I saw a HUGE herd of goats. I lost count at forty, but there were probably at least a dozen more.  Those were some nice goats!

The whole rest of the day, all 37km of it was road walking. It was hot, fiercely sunny and boring.  The first 22km of road was empty gravel country road.  The next 10 was on the verge of a State Highway. The final 5 on the access roads to Pureroa Forest Park.

The one highlight of the afternoon came at scorching 14:30 when I joined three farm workers who had just finished their day's work for a dip in a fabulous swimming hole. The river ran over a shallow, flat rocky bed, where they'd parked one of their trucks to dive off the bed of into the adjacent deep pool. The water was cool, rejuvenating and all around fabulous.

The other highlight was arriving at the campsite in Pururoa.  I was reunited with Paul from Waitomo, Yvonne from Pirongia, as well as an English couple who had struggled into camp shortly before I had.

Yvonne and I had camped up beside a couple of cyclists we'd be sharing the trail with for a couple of days. In addition to being pleasant to talk to, they were headed out on a lodge-based trip, so wanted to be rid of their excess food, which led to their offering us yogurt, fresh broccoli and greens and cups of hot coffee with fresh milk.  Hooray for trail angels like Roger and Heather!