Tuesday 07.02.2023

• Te Araroa kilometres done: 1766.3km
• Official kms: 23km
• Garmin kms: 24.44km
• Total time: 7:31
• Calories burned: 3026
• Body battery: 8/10
• Accommodation: Portage hotel
• Tent nights tally: 14
• Zero days had so far: 15

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It was nice to have a comfortable bed & a good nights sleep. We are planning to start from here at 8:30am.

But we were both ready early so we set off at 8am. The start was an initial climb of 300 metres, it wasn’t an easy start but was good to get it done early before the heat.

We decided to take a break at around every 5km point today as we weren’t on any time schedule. This was good as it gave us plenty of time to relax throughout the day. 10 minute breaks with lunch being a 30 minute break.

It was a very hot & muggy day again, we were thankful for any shade we could get.

We stopped for lunch about 1pm & were thankful of having a picnic table & only 9kms to go!

After lunch it was 2kms to Blackrock campsite, where we stopped briefly to resupply our water as it was getting low.

From here we continued on without stopping to The Portage Hotel, the promise of a swim was too tempting to stop for our last break.

It wasn’t long before we had reached our destination & checked in just after 3:30pm. It was so hot that we went to the room, a quick unpack & into togs to get straight into the pool!

Dinner was booked for 6pm so we went down 30 minutes earlier for a beer before dinner. We also had a nice red wine with dinner before heading back to the room to prep for tomorrow & just relax.

Tomorrow’s another big day with around 29km to the Queen Charlotte tavern. We will be driving from here to Lester’s Bach but for those TA walkers that don’t know, if you buy dinner here you can camp for free!