• Te Araroa kilometres done: 1105.4
• Official kms: 30.4km
• Garmin kms: 31.28km
• Total time: 9:14
• Calories burned: 3645
• Body battery: 7/10
• Accommodation: Motel in Turangi
• Tent nights tally: 10

This morning we had to pack up from our Airbnb. We spent 4 nights here so have been able to treat it like home. It’s been such a great base for the last 4 days.

On the road just before 7am heading to Owhango to collect Nici before continuing on the dirt road 5km to our drop off.

We were right on schedule & set of at 7.30am, for a change it was a fairly cool start, Nici even stopped to put a jersey on.

The scenery for the 1st 14km was beautiful. With colourful flowers, the occasional stream & river & just being in the bush.

At about our 14km point, Frank was sitting there waiting. He had decided to wait for us so we could all navigate the slip together. It wasn’t too bad really, with careful footing & making sure we didn’t go too far up or down to line up the road on the other side.

As we were finishing the slip, the DOC Ranger we had bumped into earlier who’s monitoring young Kiwi chicks was also coming across. He has 2 young chicks on this side of the slip to check out. The cool thing is Nici got to help him & is going back Thursday to spend the day helping.

After continuing on, I bumped into a NZ couple who I hadn’t seen before also doing the TA. Both from Auckland & also Purests (walking every inch without hitching). We stopped for lunch but they carried on.

After lunch (I had to fend for myself today as there is no way that little white car would’ve made it to here) we connected to the Coker track which was a narrower quad bike track that ran for 10km before getting back onto the road.

Another milestone today, we reached the 1100km point on the trail.

Not long after 4.30pm I met up with Antonia just off SH47. My end point for today & tomorrows start point.

Unfortunately the Tongariro crossing is too dangerous to do over the next few days due to gale force winds & we had it scheduled for Thursday. This means I’m going to road walk the 20km to Whakapapa tomorrow & then have a zero day on Thursday as I was originally going to do a 12km tomorrow & then the crossing to Whakapapa the following day.