Day 4 - Munchkin Land
Day 4 - by David Berry
Waipoua Forest to Dargaville
51 Kilometers
After a night in "the manger" we left without any visitation from angels or the camp host; thank god. We embarked on a 5 kilometer climb. In Luc’s word "we crushed it".
The paved road took us to yet another gravel road which brought us through rural dairy pastures that couldn't have been prettier than a picture in a magazine. While beautiful visually, yesterday's rain had turned the road’s dirt surface soft and made riding difficult and SLOW. We stopped at a small bridge for lunch, we both thought that there was good chance that a troll may have been nearby.
We heard a huge rumbling and it was a huge lorry bombarding down the road that came to a stop at the narrow bridge we were on. The driver rolled down his window and wanted to know what we were doing out there in the middle of basically nowhere. Well, we told him that we were cycling from Cape Reinga all the way to Bluff. He wanted to know what we were carrying on our bikes and where in the hell was our refrigerator ...... which got a big laugh out of all of us. We cycled on and as we got towards the end of the gravel road we were approaching a farm and two young kiwis came running towards us. They had gifts of ice cold water and freshly picked watermelon. Truly trail magic! We floated into Dargaville having been refreshed by such a wonderful treat!
Dargaville was one of the larger towns we had seen since Kaitiai. It was as though it was stuck in time (maybe not in such a good way). We passed by a Thai joint on the way through town and decided to stop for some drunken noodles and curry. It was at that moment that we realized we had to make a BIG decision. We could either bike some 69 kilometers to Pouto Point to catch the water taxi at 14:00 or bike an additional 2-3 days to get to the same point (Helensville). What a Big decision. In addition, it was also a gamble. If we missed our ferry we would be trapped on Pouto Point, which is a peninsula, for 3 days! We didn’t even have enough food for three days. Failure was not an option should we choose to go for it; we had to make the 2 o’clock ferry.
To get to the docks of Pouto Point by the time needed meant that we would have to wake up at 4:20 in the morning! Not exactly what either of us wanted to do after just finishing a big day of cycling today. Finally Luc said “I will make us a kick ass breakfast to get us going”. I agreed and we decided to go for it.
