Day 3 Raikura Track

Steve woke up to the sound of what he called the ambulance bird but I missed hearing it. There are so many crazy birds in NZ, even their pigeons are cool! We got moving with coffee and granola, no hot breakfast this time.

The trail for this section was some ups and downs, following coast before cutting across the peninsula. We had a bay in mind for lunch stop and when we rolled up we found the other campers who had left before us. They were just getting set to boil up some mussels so Steve plucked a couple from the rocks under water and threw them in! I’d read that this was something people did on the trek but wasn’t sure the correct way to gather or cook them. Turns out it is incredibly easy for both! Just wade out and make sure you gather ones that are completely closed and underwater, then steam them in a pot with just a bit of sea water until they open. These were the black mussels I think, certainly not the famous green lipped NZ mussels but they were delicious! I would have happily eaten a dozen more as is on the beach, I can’t imagine how good they would be with the addition of some garlic and butter!

After our lunch stop the track became wider and more forest road like, leading us to the other trailhead. We hit the paved road and the full sun immediately began to make itself known. As we came into town we saw the sign for the dark sky sanctuary and it occurred to us that we were the idiots who did not get up to go view the stars! Oh well! But like Steve said, we will surely be awake at night during the race and the whole island is basically a dark sky sanctuary!

We had hustled our pace this last section to try and make it to town before the fish stand closed at 2 pm. Turns out they were closed the whole day due to a funeral on the island. I’m sure with a population so small, this event is attended by everyone local. We settled for another lunch at The Snuggery. I then walked down to the airport/post office to see if we could get us an earlier flight back to the mainland and we lucked into a 3:30 pm flight instead of 5:30 pm.