I woke up late, being that my tendons around my ankles were super sore from the 60km of road and beach walking to get to this point. All that hiking in the mountains of France couldn’t have prepared me for that much road walking.. human physiques just weren’t meant to walk on such hard surfaces!
And besides, low tide wasn’t until noon, so I got going around 11, and the Waimatuku River was actually crossable now! Woo! It was barely ankle deep, a much better situation than yesterday when I nearly fell in up to my shoulders, too close to high tide.
I had another 13km along the beach to get to the town of Riverton, and mother nature saw fit to blast me with every manner of uncomfortable forms of water possible, including sea spray, constant freezing half-rain, and hail. HAIL! On the beach!
Thoroughly wind swept and worn out, I thought maybe I would stay in Riverton for a night or two, but decided against it. Ended up grabbing a huge burger and hit the supermarket on the way out to top up with about 5 days of food.
The trail leads up and over a hill, and then unto one of the most scenic ocean walks I’ve ever seen! It reminded me much of the section of the Big Sur where Carl Sagan filmed the first part of Episode 1 of the TV series, “Cosmos.”
I follow the ocean line along fences and ridges designed to keep sheep in their place, eventually coming to a short road, and then a 2km walk down a pebble beach (not the most fun surface to walk on nearly 20km into the day with sore shins).
Finally, the trail joins a beach road that leads to a small little neighborhood. I thought about staying in the campground here, but saw on my map that there was a nice wooded area just 2km down the road, so figured I’d save my money and head there.
It turned out to be the George Lake Wildlife Refuge, which was more of a swamp (think Florida Everglades) than a forest. There was a lot of very high grass and bush, but I found an okay spot to pitch the tent where I knew no one would bother me. Heck, it seemed like no one ever really comes to this place anyways, on account of how swampy it was.
The sunset was spectacular and my legs were thankful for the rest. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, and oh how right it was..
Just enough space for a tent
Alright, goodnight!