• Te Araroa kilometres done: 593.5km
• Official kms: 28.5km
• Garmin kms: 29.52km
• Total time: 8.32
• Calories burned: 3141
• Body battery: 7/10
• Accommodation: Mark & Suz place
• Tent nights tally: 6

This morning is an easy pack up & drive back to the track with breakfast on the way.

We went through the drive through at McDonald’s Warkworth for breakfast for Danny, Gokul & myself.

Danny dropped us off just after 8am from where he picked us up from the afternoon before & we said our goodbyes. Awesome to catch up with him & the family!

The 1st part of today was 1km of beach before going up & over via road. This would be a similar theme for the rest of the day.

The rain started fairly early, so the rain jacket was required. About 5km into the walk we caught up with Jon & Caroline having a coffee at a cafe & then proceeded to walk with them off & on for the rest of the day.

We ended up stopping for lunch in Takapuna, it was fortunate that the eatery we were at let 4 wet hikers in.

After lunch we only had about 8km to get to Devonport where we were catching the Ferry across to the city, the 1st glimpse of Auckland was seen when coming around North head.

The Ferry runs every 30 minutes & we were in time to catch the 3.15. This is a nice quick 12 minute trip into downtown Auckland.

From here we walked about 4km & stopped just shy of 30km for the day at the bottom of Mt Eden, where we will pick up the trail again tomorrow. We Ubered from here to a good friend that use to live in Christchurch, Mark. He is hosting the 4 of us tonight.

It was really good catching up with Mark, we spent a few hours talking & having a pizza for dinner. Now for bed & hoping to do a 30+ kilometre day tomorrow.