By Ruth

Distance: 13km

We woke up early as usual this morning and enjoyed a relaxing morning coffee on the terrace before a hot breakfast of eggs, beans, avocado and toast.

Afterwards the luxury continued, as one of the services offered by our hosts was to leave our big packs with them for the day, and do today’s walk with just a daypack. Today we walked the gorgeous but challenging Te Whara track which follows a distinctive ridge along the cape of the peninsula. Here is a view of the Te Whara ridge from yesterday’s beach:

And here is the view from the top of the ridge.

Two happy hikers.

We were extra happy to be doing the hike with just our daypacks, although we did feel a little bad when we passed our fellow TA walkers with their big packs on the trail. To make up for it we did a little extra loop at the end of the ridge.

After the hike, Melissa, one of our hosts from last night, came to bring us our bags, and also drove us a few minutes down the road so we could skip a few kilometres of road walking. We asked her to drop us at a cafe near the campsite where we enjoyed a coffee and brownie, before walking into camp.

After yesterday’s plush comforts I was a bit worried it would be hard to go back to camping, especially since tonight’s camping spot is pretty rudimentary, without even cold showers. But it’s a beautiful location, we have the company of our fellow walkers, and we saw a beautiful sunset. So it wasn’t so hard after all.