12 – 40 Manganui Campground
Today was my first real day of walking as I got up at dawn, made a cuppa, packed up, and headed off. Oh, and there was gruel too.
It takes quite a lot of time to pack up and the entire effort seems quite useless when you know that you will do the reverse that evening, albeit in a different place. I feel some sort of tent pack concertina arrangement might be a better idea. Something that solves the entire put up tent to put pack in fiasco.
There is an island with a hole in it. I probably should have taken a picture of it in retrospect. I found it is useful for judging distance travelled by the size, or lack thereof, of the hole.
There is a lot of beach, with much sand. It looks like this place has been getting beaten by waves. Many of the sand dunes are cliffs with vegetation hanging down them.
Thus far, I have been aiming for campsites to stay the night at. Or at least to aim for. I think that this may have been a bit of a mistake and this campsite isn't any different from sleeping behind a sand dunes. No water, no shelter, toilet broken. I had a look at getting their water system going but in the end just filtered some water out of a bathtub. It was easier.
There was a motorcycle this morning that passed me by heading south. I think he must have to do it every day because an hour or so after he disappeared the tourist bus came through. It looked like a good job.
There isn't nearly as much rubbish as I thought there would be. I pretty much expected something like the west coast of the barrier used to be like when I was a kid with tangled bags and six pack holders, nets and lost buoys. However, in most areas there is only one piece of visible rubbish about every fifty meters with the frequency increasing around campgrounds.
Hindsight
- This was a long day. I wished I had of shortened it by walking further the day before.
- There were a couple of streams at the start but not so many as I went along. Taking extra water is a good thing.
- The hole in the rock is about the only way of seeing any progress you have made.
Manganui Campground Map
