Clean undie day! Short black coffee at Waitomo store before heading into blazing sun.
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2km up Fullerton Rd we were supposed to go over a stile into a farm paddock. There was a sign on fence for an option to road walk or bulls in paddock and 4km of gorse bashing…. Hmmm we chose the road!
First stop gave us our first view of Te Kuiti.. The oxidation ponds….
Walking into Te Kuiti we thought we would just get to end of main St and find a shady spot for lunch. We’ll it took us an hour… We were stopped 3 times with people wanting to talk to us and let us know how crazy we were. 2 couples on motorbikes invited us to join them, they insisted as they had ordered way to much food and asked if we wanted to eat it, well we definitely didn’t say no. Garlic bread, chips, cold water.. We chatted about similarities of walking and motorbikes… None.
Next as we passed a Maori dude pissing on the hedge in main street., he turned as he finished and said “chur, were ews fullas going” we said Tauramanui he said “fckn bullshit, u crazy! He laughed all the to his car and yelled out ” have a good day”
Onwards, we wanted to head out of town about 8km as a night in Te Kuiti didn’t really appeal.
Planned camp site turned out to be a local hangout on a Friday night so we pushed on to the reserve that wasn’t accessible by vehicles. We’ll worth it, beautiful gully right by a river.
Cool swim, quick clothes wash, food and lights out by 8pm lol.
Irene Ground's Travels 