Day 33: Pokeno to Meremere

Te Araroa kilometres done: 696km
Official kms: 22km
Garmin kms: 19.52km
Total time: 6.05
Calories burned: 2275
Body battery: 8/10. Air mattress deflated & had to blow it back up at 3am
Accommodation: Airbnb in Meremere
Tent nights tally: 7

This morning the alarm went off at 6am, I was already half awake. There is a rooster here that decided we should all be awake from 5am.

We are leaving here at 8am & probably diverting some of our track to road as we hear there is flooding & overgrown track.

We said goodbye to Adrian & Nadja drove us back to our start point, also Adrian gave me a pair of socks as my ones are just about done & I have no others.

We walked along the main SH2 for about 3km until we reached Dobson street. We have seen notes that going this route can save you walking an extra 2km along the busy highway & 1km along the stop bank but had to cross the river that is generally only waist deep. So decided that the river crossing was worth it.

We were in for a surprise. I tested it out without my pack on & it went over my head! It was at this point we decided we either need to pack float across or backtrack about 4km to get back to this point on the other side. The river was very slow moving so we decided to do it. I went across 1st, dropped my pack & swam back to help Gokul across as he’s not too confident in the water. It all went according to plan.

From here we walked along the stop bank for a few kilometres in grass that was sometimes chest high before getting to a road end where we took our packs off & dried out for 30 minutes before walking the next 4km to Mercer where we had McDonalds for lunch!

Then it was only 6km of hugging SH1 shoulder to Meremere so we took off down the highway in hi vis sticking as far right as possible. This was fairly simple & within no time we were in Meremere.