Today was a day as full as it can get. I woke up at 8:30am and had a good breakfast. Yesterday I bought too much stuff again at Pack n' Save (New Zealand supermarket) so I have a lot of things that gives energy, hopefully!
I started at 11am direction Tutukaka, a village situated along the coastline. Here you can see a house almost dipping its toes into the water. I see a lot of houses set up this way, very impressive. Note though, half of them are for sale.
Short break here. Each day is a little bit harder than the previous one. I’ll eat a snack and will keep going soon :-)
At first I planned to stop at Tutukaka but I’ve cycled only 30km so far. It was 1pm and not much to visit around except visiting the marina so I pushed a bit further.
I just arrived in Matapouri. I left the main road for the beach and I ended up here, a wonderful bay! An old couple are walking towards me. I asked them if there is more people in summer and there answer was: “no, it is always quiet like this here”.
Wow, private beach for like 50 houses here. Even if they all go out at the same time they would have a lot of space for themselves.
Before continuing onto the road I was I came from I asked to 2 kiwis if I could use the path along the coast that goes directly to Whananaki but they said that will not be possible on push bike. Ok, in that case, I will have to to a big 25km loop while that path is something like 9km.
On top of that, I see on the map that Whananaki is separated by the ocean but there is a type of human made plateforme or bridge that was constructed but I don’t have real proof of that. If I cannot use that “bridge” I will have to cycle around a second loop which would extend my trip by a lot. And above that, I will have to climb the same hill twice, rah!
Climbing, climbing…
Let’s try anyway. The first 25km loop was not easy. I ended up on foot, pushing the bike. The top of that hill reached 200m, I was done…
Finally I arrived at the junction with Hailes road and from there I had to hope that the “bridge” connecting Whananaki was something I could use or I I had to make another loop around. The short road was a gravel road while the longest one was sealed. I chose the shortest. Let’s see!
More uphill…
After 12km on the gravel road, I was relieved to see that this is indeed a bridge. And the view, again, is pretty great.
I had to separate the trailer from the bike because it was slightly too wide. Once the bike trailer and myself reached the other side I found out that there was a campsite right in front of me. Actually it is the sport’s field of the school. There is no shower, no kitchen, just toilets but for $8 per night that’s a good deal. I even ended up paying $5 because I did not have the change. The guy is very nice: “Ok no problem, $5 is fine”. Oook, cool, I’m happy too then :-)
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