• Te Araroa kilometres done: 1163.7
• Official kms: 20.7km
• Garmin kms: 21.48km
• Total time: 7:15
• Calories burned: 2520
• Body battery: 8/10 my right leg is not playing ball! Bruises everywhere.
• Accommodation: Plateau lodge
• Tent nights tally: 10

This morning we decided to sleep in until 7am & leave at 9am. I woke up at 6am, damn body clock!

Buffet for breakfast this morning, we were up there & getting into at just after 7am. It was really good. Bacon, poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, hash browns etc. & a coffee.

Today is Antonia’s 1st official day on the trail, meaning shes packing everything into her bag & we are walking the 20km to National park. About 14km on trail & the rest on the main road.

We left earlier than we scheduled. Hitting the trail at 8.30am. The first 6km was nice easy walking track & then after turning off from Whakapapaiti stream it turned into tramping track, but was still generally pretty good track.

Just before the road walking started we got to Mangahuia campsite. This would be an awesome place to camp, a few toilets around. A nice shelter with sinks & taps. We stopped here for lunch & there were some of the other TA hikers I have met on the trail having lunch here also, so we had a quick chat to them. They were heading NOBO (north bound) to try & get over the Tongariro crossing tomorrow & had connected the trail by jumping ahead and getting those days done before returning back to try the crossing.

After lunch it was only a 7km road walk to our accommodation. Antonia started to get sore feet, I know how she feels as that was how it was for me after the first 4 weeks of beach & road walking. I’ve only just recently gotten used to it.

It didn’t seem to take long before we reached National park, stopping in at the local Foursquare to pick up some meat & veges for dinner before continuing on about 1km to our accommodation for tonight.

We spent the afternoon/evening getting a load of washing done, cooking dinner & now time to relax & for Antonia to put her feet up (literally!). We have a 27.5km day tomorrow, mainly gravel road & some track. Looking forward to another day on the trail with Antonia. 😁👍🏼