Te Araroa day 69 – El Rancho
February 9th 2017
El Rancho holiday park - possible camping
8miles
Total distance: 1027.4 miles
We weren't sure what to do today as we were limited by places to camp. A really short day or a really big day were the options. After back to back big tiring days we opted for a small day. I got up about 6:30, way earlier than I usually would, but I need to call Amazon and find out what has happened to my shoes I ordered a couple of weeks ago.
It's a very long boring story and it took me about an hour and a half to sort out, but the short version is that the tracking information states delivery was attempted by courier but unsuccessful on Feb 3rd. No more info after that. The man at amazon tried everything he could to track them down but he couldn't so he issued me a refund for my inconvenience. A few phone calls later, and a bit of detective work by me, I found out they are waiting for me at the post office in Wellington. So I get new shoes (fingers crossed) and my money back! But I would have rather not had to spend that long on the phone sorting it out!
We went to the office to settle up for our stay as the office had been closed when we got there. It was only NZ$12. The lady was really nice and seemed surprised that we had bothered comeing to pay given that we could have just upped and left (not a cool thing to do). I spent the rest of the morning lounging and updating the blog so I hopefully don't have to do it when I get to Wellington and I can rest properly. I finally took a shower and I found a whole bar of soap already in there. I think it's my lucky day! The mud is properly ground into my skin and I will need a good scrub to get it off, and I didn't have anything to scrub with. But at least I was now less smelly.
Julia and I suddenly had a flourish of activity in the afternoon when we decided to book a bunch of things, our ferry to Picton (NZ$57) and our ferry to Ship Cove (NZ$67), our pass for the Queen Charlotte Track (NZ$18) and hostels for Wellington and Picton (NZ$85). That was an expensive half hour!! But a few less chores to do in Wellington and we felt like we have put our lazy day to some use. The rest served us well and we ended up hiking out at 3:30pm
After a short walk along a nice estuary track we joined the beach and walked along that for a couple of miles. It was such a beautiful area, mountains on the left and the ocean on the right. Perfect. And the sun was out today for the first time in a while. I had started to forget what that felt like!
We stopped at a cafe for dinner and I had some delicious fish tacos. We were expecting to meet Marcus there but he was nowhere to be seen. We continued on along the beach and enjoyed the late afternoon sun. It was like a late summers evening.
We found the camp spot which was a grassy patch nestled behind the beach. We watched the sun set and Marcus arrived just before it got dark, he had been having some stomach issues.
It feels a bit odd to be camped so close to civilisation. I can hear cars, music and the soft lapping of the ocean. I can see the lights of a nearby town twinkling on the shore.