• Te Araroa kilometres done: 564.5km
• Official kms: 23.5km
• Garmin kms: 25.14km
• Total time: 7.53
• Calories burned: 2777
• Body battery: 7/10
• Accommodation: Daniel & Shars house.
• Tent nights tally: 6

Today was a sleep in. Waking at 6.30am we are planning to leave at 8.30am

Luke, Cristal & the kids are going to cheer me on & say hello as I walk past. We left on time & said our goodbyes to Kevin who is having a zero. I hope he catches back up! Especially for his mums sake who likes seeing him in my blog.

Within 45 minutes & 3km we bumped into Luke, Cristal & my nieces & nephew. They put in such an amazing effort in creating those banners! I felt so grateful.

After saying our goodbyes we walked up the street a further kilometre & found a Cafe to stop & buy a coffee where we bumped into fellow hiker James then Matt & Naomi.

After this it was mainly road walking for the rest of the morning, making our way to Stillwater where we had to be extra vigilant on the narrow winding roads. I stopped for lunch at the Stillwater campground for an hour as low tide is 3.45pm & there is a rather deep estuary crossing coming up only crossable at low tide.

After lunch I got to the start of the crossing at 2.30pm & James was there ready to cross. I decided to follow him but without my pack to see how deep it gets. It ended up being chest height for him but only for a few metres. After he crossed I returned to the start grabbed my bags & proceeded to cross with Gokul & another hiker Chad. It was a fun crossing & just below my chest at the deepest.

After the crossing we had a nice coastal walk of around 4km to get to the Long bay car park where my younger brother Danny was waiting.

He took Gokul & I back to Wellsford for the night where we got to catch up with him, Shar & my nieces. Danny also cooked some amazing burgers for dinner! Really awesome & blessed to have such great family & be able to spend time with them while on this journey!

Tomorrow we are leaving here at 7am to be dropped off & start walking at 8am. Hoping to put in a 30km day.