Te Araroa (day 14) - Moir Hill to Stillwater / mile 346

First rainy day on the trail. Luckily it was still dry in the morning so I quickly packed up everything and hit the road. After few miles of easy trail I stopped at the campsite Maggie and Ursula have stayed last night, they were having a late start today aiming for the visit at the tearoom down the road when it opens at 10am. I topped up the water and went on. Just after 9am I arrived at Puhoi, it had a general store which served coffee and breakfast baps with egg, bacon and hash browns. I sat down outside of it and had a chat with three local bikers about the trail and fishing (somehow you always end up talking about fishing around here).

Fifteen minutes later I was back on the road, aiming to get to the highway and get a hitchhike to Waiwera as I didn't fancy walking along the busy road, especially when it rained. After ten minutes of waiting I got a ride from Ben who emigrated here from England fifteen years ago, we talked about what he liked about New Zealand and how all of his mates in England didn't change much except they all have wives and kids now. He got so into the conversation that he drove me all the way to Orewa, another city along the trail, I had to ask him to stop as he would just keep on talking and driving further along.

There were couple of big shops here, I went to New World and did a 3 day resupply. After that I carried on walking to Silverdale, another big town, trail was passing by a shopping mall here, I popped into Kathmandu, an outdoor shop and bought a new gas canister, then I carried on walking until I reached the end of town, here I got a recommended by locals hitchhike through a narrow, windy and quite dangerous for hikers road leading to Stillwater. Conrad a local builder picked me up straight away from the side of the road, his mother moved into this area years ago when it was still a quiet village, now it was becoming a big town with new houses and roads to ease off the traffic from Auckland.

Once here I checked into a caravan campground, it was 10$ per person and you could stay in the hall under the roof, the walls been covered by TA hikers graffiti, the place was a beautiful mess. After an hour I have been joined by Lukas from Slovakia, he knew Polish quite well so we could communicate in my mother tongue. We made a plan for tomorrow as the trail was running throught another tidal river crossing, we had to leave the campground at 5am to be by the river an hour later during the low tide.

We drunk few Czech beers at the nearby pub, talked with locals about fishing and tides, Lukas was carrying a drone and he shot an amazing video at the 90 mile beach of two orcas feeding on a shark. We went back to the hall and played some pool, Lukas has booked himself for two days at one of the Auckland's hotels and I was considering taking a bus from there to Hamilton as it was mainly roadwalking on that section, it would give me enough time to complete the Southern Island without too much time pressure, I was only here for three months after all. I checked the Intercity tickets, it was 27$ to get there, the only question was where would I stay as the affordable accomodation was scarce and mostly booked already. It looked like I would have to improvise something.