Day 60: Ohauora Campsite to Tieke Campsite (41 km total, 1253-1265)

Like yesterday, I started the morning listening to some news podcasts while packing and eating breakfast. Gail's muesli bars have been the best breakfast I've had while backpacking on this trip. I said good morning to everyone that was up and started carrying stuff down to the canoes once I was packed.

We all got on the river and had our canoes packed around 8. It was going to be a somewhat long day with an hour and a half walk in the middle of it to the Bridge to Nowhere.

We started the morning off right with some flotilla-ing and stopped at a sandbar after a few hours for lunch and snacks. After that we had a huge flotilla with six other TA hikers that began the river trip a day before us. They were headed to a campsite just across the river from where we were headed. After a bit we broke off from the flotilla and made it to the Bridge to Nowhere.

There was nowhere to pull the boats up, but we tied them to some metal tie offs and climbed out. It was about a 30 minute walk to the Bridge to Nowhere from the water. After World War I, soldiers were given land in the area. The Bridge was built for them soon after but the terrain was difficult and many people moved away. Eventually the country didn't want to maintain it anymore, and they forced the people left in the settlement to leave.

It's still a beautiful bridge, and we ran into lots of cyclists biking the long trail to it. They were planning to be picked up by boat where our canoes were tied up. If you follow he TA trail exactly, you're supposed to walk that trail and get your canoe where ours were tied up. But since there is nothing there, the only way to get a canoe there is to have it brought in by jet boat (which is about twice as expensive as what we're doing with Blazing Paddles, and you'd miss the majority of the Whanganui River Great Walk).

After stopping at Whakahoro and the Bridge to Nowhere, we paddled and sang for a bit and then had a flotillita (what we call a small flotilla) with Dave and Kristen. Eventually we made it to Tieke Campsite and checked in with the hut warden. Thankfully she let the two people in our group with different reservations stay with us.

There's a marae, a Maori meetinghouse, at the campsite. It was really neat to look at, but I didn't think I was supposed to go inside so I didn't.

We all made and ate dinner. Marjolein is still cooking fresh veggies and making gourmet dinners. As we ate, Mike read over the notes for what we're doing tomorrow. The sand flies were biting us like crazy! They've been bad this entire trip, but they were particularly bad tonight. A little after dark we all headed for bed. We didn't have too long of a day tomorrow, but there were a few detours we wanted to take during the day and we've heard the next few days on the river take a lot more paddling.