Day 5 - Kaitaia

In a normal year I would’ve set off into the Herekino Forest track, however it has been closed. This is due to Kauri dieback; a native tree species that has been decimated in recent years due to a fungal disease. Happy to oblige I took the alternate 14km road walk back to Kiataia. An easy day to recover my feet. I fully intended to walk this section, but someway out of the town a local pulled off to the side of the road and offered a lift. While I don’t plan to hitch, I took up his offer. I found it very difficult to turn down such generosity. Kenti, the man who picked me up, lived in Canada for a period and we talked about indigenous rights in our two countries. Clearly NZ has much better integration of European and indigenous culture. They even have schools that teach exclusively in their indigenous language.

11am picture, downtown Kaitaia 

In Kaitaia I went for a food shop for the next stretch, and picked up some lamb shoulders to cook for dinner. I lost my stove on the beach and picked up a new one to replace it. 

I met up with the Aussies and Elco at the hostel we were staying at. The Aussies hitched out of 90 mile beach because Chris had a chest infection, and Lindy had so many blisters she couldn’t put on her shoes. They’ll have a zero day tomorrow. Elco managed to lose his entire tent on 90mile beach, which admittedly made me feel better about the fact that I lost my stove… 

To finish the day we went to the local bar and ending up playing pool against a local avocado farmer. She thought us mad for walking for so long. Chris hit the VLTs, won 70$, and bought us another round. 

Pouring over the maps of the Northland Forests