Russell Onwards

Ricky Morton gave us a lift into Auckland in the morning with no complications, like pile-ups etc! After walking around to try and find a few last minute things, we had a kebab and headed down to catch the bus to Paihia. The Naked bus arrived! Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you see it, no one was naked. 3 and a half hours later we were in Paihia waiting for the ferry to arrive. Our personal shuttle (no one else was there) to Russell arrived and we paid $21 (~£10 pounds) to cross. An awesome sunset and moon lit our way across the water where we were met by Jane and Jeff Hindle. Back at their awesome house (complete with half built yacht in the yard) we were given free reign of the downstairs guest house. After a delicious dinner of sausages and potato salad, we all crashed out on the floor (beds were available but we thought we’d try and get used to the sleeping on the ground).

The next day we milled around in the morning, mainly doing website things and building beer can stoves out of cans of Speights (Anders’ new favorite beer!). After breakfast we thought we’d give our legs a stretch on a short walk. We walked down into Russell to get some food for the day then continued on to Long Beach. We ate our lunch on some rocks, in the audience of 20 or so really annoying seagulls and then attempted to fish for whatever we could catch. After not catching anything we went exploring. All the way along Long Beach, around the headland, over more rocks, along another small beach and finally up some small track at the back of the beach. We didn’t really know where it would take us but the sun was up and the weather looked good, so we didn’t fear. And BEHOLD what it provided!

After an early start on the 23^rd, if by early you mean 8am, we wandered down to the wharf where a Tall ship was waiting. If you don’t know what a tall ship is, it’s a pirate ship. 

This particular Tall ship is called the R. Tucker Thompson and it is run under a charitable trust, taking tourists out for day sails to pay for berthing costs and in the winter months running week-long leadership and teambuilding cruises for less fortunate children. Greeting us was Tom (the first mate) a legend hailing from Canada who fell in love with Tall ships after climbing around on the rigging a couple of years back. Skipper Beast, destined to be a farmer turned to boat building and then discovered that he could get paid for sailing Tall ships, a lifestyle choice that is serving him well. Both awesome guys that handle the ship well and gave us a great day out, jumping from the rigging, swimming to shore and handling the ropes. Gotta say that this is a wicked thing to do if you’re around Russell, we just had the best day!

Jane became even more awesome by driving us all the way… to Kaitaia, which definitely had a Pak-N-Save. Tank I need food, lots of food. After shopping we were introduced to Jane’s friend Bronwyn Hunt (a regional counselor for Northland) which was cool. Re-structuring our backpacks to handle so much taste took a while and just as we finished Abe Witana pulled in. We threw our backpacks in the trunk said thank you to Jane and Abe drove us Northward. We were all pretty excited to talk to Abe because he was the first Maori that we had the time to get to know and from what we heard he knew. Abe has an amazing knowledge of bushcraft and tucker, of which we absorbed as much as we could. Saying bye to Abe at the Cape was pretty crazy, we were now ‘unsupported’ – everything is carried by us. Lucky we are more prepared than some kitted out with great gear from our sponsors which up until this point we haven’t really used.

A quick chicken later and we walked down to the Lighthouse. It was getting late and as we walked down it began to hit home that we were walking 1800 miles and are packs are HEAVY. (Landey) "I think we took way too much food but Anders insisted on butter etc. needless!" An inaccurate estimation put our packs at around 25kgs. Lots of spiritual-ness on the Cape which we paid more attention to this time, which has nothing to do with our walk but was awesome to learn a bit about Maori’s religious beliefs (the Cape is protected land because that is where the Maori dead enter the afterlife, there is also a Pohutukawa tree that never blooms). Anyway got a picture of the Signpost and we took off towards Bluff… TASTY TREK GO!