Te Araroa Trail – Day 25

Thursday, November 23, 2023
Distance/ Total: 33.2 km / 20.6 mi

I got a really late start this morning. Steve, the Puhoi Tearooms owner, offers to cook breakfast in the morning for TA hikers. He was busy this morning and couldn’t do breakfast until after 8:30am. I waited around for breakfast and it was great. Bacon, eggs, & toast.

I finally got started about 9:15. The first 6 kilometers was a road walk toward the coast. It was already starting off as a hot day when I got on the road.

Reaching Wenderholm Park the trail followed a very nice single track up to the top of the hill through another semi-tropical forest. It was mostly in trees so views were not that great, but the forest was nice.

Leaving the forest a short roadwalk led to a beach walk along the cliffs. The tide was coming in and in a couple of places I had to wade through some shallow water to get around the head and back to the sand beach.

Another short roadwalk led to Orewa Beach and a nice long sandy beach walk. The beach was only one block off from the city, so I jumped over and grabbed a coke and took a short break in the shade.

Back on trail it was a nice bike/ walking path following the shore of the Orewa River before leaving the tranquility of the bay and getting dumped into a heavy business district of Silverdale. The traffic was heavy and the road out of town narrow making for a harrowing road walk.

The trail turned onto a twisty road towards Stillwater. Once again there was no shoulder and lots of traffic. It was about 7 kilometers to the camp and my feet were killing me from all the road walking when I arrived.

I stayed at Stillwater Holiday Park which was really hiker friendly. I setup my tent, showered, ate dinner then headed down the street to the boat club to grab a couple of beers with the other hikers.

We headed back about 8:00 and crawled into our tents for the night.