Day 19: A Family Dinner

October 29th, 2019

Kilometer: 412.2-436.3 (25.2 kilometers hiked)

Camp Waipu Cove to Coastal Cow Hostel

When I left the dorm room this morning to go to the bathroom, I found the Belgian brothers with their sleeping bags pulled up over their heads on the mattresses in the hallway. I laughed to myself as a little as I had somehow almost forgotten about them not fitting in the beds.

We got ready at our usual pace and were off just before 8. We stopped at the dairy and I picked up a muffin and a chocolate milk for breakfast. With us being down to our emergency supply of Advil, I opted not to take any for the first time in almost two weeks. Alex definitely needed some to help his ankle/lower leg loose.

We set off walking the kilometer back to the trail. Everyone was sluggish today with the weather being cold and miserable from the get go. To make matters worse, pretty much everyone was dealing with some sort of ailment slowing them down.

When we got back to the trail, we began climbing on a road.

The climb would take us to almost 300 meters as the road turned from pavement to gravel when we entered what appeared to be a logging area. The grey sky finally decided to open up and we all inevitably had to put on our rain gear. With the cloud cover being so low, we found taking decent pictures near impossible during the morning.

We eventually had to leave the logging road as it entered private property and we began walking through the forest. The hike was fairly easy despite a few small climbs complicated by mud from the freshly fallen rain. There was a long downhill section down to the road which took a toll on Alex’s already hurting ankle and my aching knees.

At the bottom, the trail met up with a seemingly pointless caldesack where a large group of hikers from last nights camp were all having lunch. We also decided to break for lunch at this point and ate our usual lunch fare.

Following lunch, we continued our descent down to the main road. Charlie and I, well behind the others, took a shortcut by walking around a gate as opposed to taking the 1.2 kilometer detour. The others were not pleased when we beat them back to the trail.

From there, we climbed again back up onto farmland. The farmlands took us all the way to the coast where we met up with another coastal track for a wonderful view of the the coves along the beach to Mangawhai Heads.

Alex managed to get an incredible black and white picture of a tree hanging off the edge of the cliff trail.

The trail then dropped us down onto the beach for two of the final three kilometers. Peter and Alex were far ahead followed by Charlie, then myself, with Phillip bringing up the rear.

After striking out at the Mangawhai Heads Holiday Park, we found the loveliest hostel, called The Coastal Cow, which was much closer to town. The hostel had laundry, unlimited free WiFi, hot showers, comfortable beds, and a dog which reminded me so much of my pup Max back in the states.

After showering and getting some laundry in, we went to a local pizza spot for our first dinner of the night, which was around 5:00pm.

After our first meal, we went across to the Foursquare and resupplied our food and gathered everything we needed for a feast. We got wine, potatoes, onions, gravy mix, peppers, steaks, and fixings for a salad.

We went back to the hostel and the Belgians got to work preparing all the food. Charlie couldn’t figure out how to get the grill to work so he assumed that I knew how a bbq worked because I’m American. Luckily, I was able to get the grill fired up and immediately found myself as the one in charge of grilling the peppers and steaks.

After over an hour of prep and cooking, our feast was complete. The Coastal Cow was a woman named Dawn’s residence that she had transformed into a hostel so we even had a real dining table to sit at. At 8, we all sat down for a family dinner, easily the best meal any of us have eaten the entire trip.

We all are going to bed with clean clothes and full stomachs happy as can be. Tomorrow should be an easy day with half the day being on the road, other half on beach. Today was a fantastic day.

-Ethan