TA Day 123
TA Day 123: Sunday 20 April 2025
Raetea North Side - Ahipara (Ahipara Holiday Park)
No rain this morning, yay! Lukas felt tired but both of us were really excited to reach Kaitaia later today. We took down the tent and walked a bit along the road before we sat down and had breakfast by the side of the road. The sun was shining and life felt pretty good for a moment. A man on a moped passed us 4 times while we had our break, and we realised that this might even be the first moped we had seen since we arrived in New Zealand!
After tedious road walk, we finally reached Kaitaia. We went to first best café and had a milkshake and iced coffee. While sitting there, Kim suddenly realised that since it is Easter, pretty much everything is closed! We had planned to buy our favourite food and snacks for this last section, but we couldn’t go to PAK'nSAVE, so what to do now? After frantically looking for places that might be open, we found a dairy to resupply at, and there we just had to make the best of the situation. No wraps and barely any vegetables, and no pesto, so wraps as food was out of the questions. No chocolate covered nuts and not a lot of dried foods either… For breakfast we bought bread, jam and nutella. For lunch/dinner we already had one meal in our pack and bought three pasta packages as one meal and tuna and rice as the last meal. The snacks were a weird mix of candy, chocolate, cheese and crackers.
After resupplying we went to a kebab restaurant and had some wraps.
Then it was back to road walking. Kim’s feet hurt really bad and all we wanted was to get there. We were happy that this was the final road walk on this hike.
Kaitaia back in the days…
Kaitaia now…
“You are loved”
The last few km we walked in the dark. Sadly, and to our surprise, this road to Ahipara was just as busy as State Highway 1, if not busier, and didn’t have any shoulder at all so in many ways it felt worse than before.
Reaching the Holiday Park in the evening was a relief, and we were also happy to have our tent spot just beside the bathroom, showers and kitchen so we didn’t have to walk more than necessary.
Today's:
Distance: 34.94 km
Ascent: 129 m
Descent: 230 m
Tent nights: 58/123
Weather: Mostly sunny
