Te Araroa day 54 – Back in Taumarunui
January 25th 2017
0 miles
Total distance: 781.8 miles
We had the day off to prepare for the river trip today. After a leisurely start, and after saying farewell to the canoe group leaving today, and spending some time updating the blog, we decided to hitch into town to get our resupply done. We stood on the side of the road and only a few minutes passed until a guy, Ian, pulled over with his two sons in the car. They were all super nice and friendly, they had only just moved to the area and were heading to town to enrol in a new school. Ian said he would wait for us to do our shopping and he would take us back to the holiday park. Excellent!
So he dropped us at New World and we set about the agonising task of resupplying for 6 days on the river. We don't have to carry the food so we can get heavier things, anything we wanted really. I didn't get anything that exciting but seemed to spend an awful lot of money! We started walking back to the school and Ian came driving down the rod looking for us, which was great as it had started raining. He took us right to the entrance of the park and we set about sorting out our food.
My resupply
Julia’s resupply
After lunch of leftover chicken sandwiches and more blog updating we got a ride with Phil, the owner of the holiday park, and a bunch of other hikers into town. First stop the iSight to book bus tickets for our onward journey back to Palmerston North after the river, second stop McDonald's to abuse their wifi, third stop the cinema to meet Sara, Vicky and Marjory where we watched Moana. It was brilliant. I was totally captured by the whole thing. Amazing. I welcomed that couple of hours just to be able to switch off my brain and not think about anything but Moana.
Helene, Phil's partner, came and picked us all up and we were back in time for the canoe man to come and deliver all our dry barrels and fit us for life jackets. I got an extra small which was surprising because I feel like I'm about to burst out of my clothing like the Incredible Hulk. My clothes aren't tight when I move them, but it all feels tight. It's really odd.
There were lots of us there, the 14 from our group and then 4 other people seem to be joining in our group. It was all a bit overwhelming with questions being fired from all directions but it eventually all got sorted out. I asked Helene if she had any bin liners, and I wanted to buy a couple off her. She wanted to give me some, but she thought that everyone else would want one. She gave me a whole bag of them and I decided to charge everyone NZ$1 for a bag. They were all happy to pay and when I gave to money to Helene she tried to give the money back to me. I wouldn't take it and she said she would put it towards the money they collect for the cleaning staff Christmas presents. So that's nice.
A whole bunch of us hung out in the kitchen, the only people who were missing were Erin and Trevor. Not sure where they have disappeared to. We ate and chatted until it was dark and time for bed. Big day tomorrow!