19km Day : 583 km Total
17 January 2015
-41.2786, 173.7658

It rained last night. It was a light but steady rain that lasted all night. I stayed in my tent longer than usual this morning and was rewarded by the rain stopping around 8:30. As I was packing up and breaking down my tent there was a group of other hikers just down the beach doing the same thing. When i was almost finished packing I went over to speak with them. They are hikers from Colorado also hiking Te Araroa, so there will be at least 6 of us starting the richmond track at about the same time.

More than half of today’s hike was walking on the road. A couple of kilometers had very narrow shoulders. So I had to be careful because there was a moderate amount of traffic. The difficult part of today’s walk was climbing Mahakipawa. It was a 300 meter climb over a distance of 1.5 kilometers. To make matters worse the sun came out and the temperature climbed to 30°C. And there was very little shade along the track. When I reached the peak I met an English hiker who had just finished climbing from the other side. He had recently completed the Richmond track. We shared a small area of shade and discussed some of the tracks we had hiked. He answered several of my questions about the Richmond track, which I will soon be hiking.

The following 2 photos taken from both sides of the peak show the majority of today’s walk.

Looking Back

Havelock

Havelock is advertised as the Greenshell Mussel Capitol of the World. So guess what I had for dinner.