Day 40. Zero Day Planning. December 12, 2015.

3 km
Taumarunui to Taumaranui Canoes Headquarters

Today we spent planning the next section of trail. There are lots of options. We will paddle the Whanganui River from Taumaranui to the city of Whanganui. We will be deviating a bit from the official TA which has us starting the canoe journey further down the river. But we will still have continuous footsteps and water travel. Sitting in a canoe for 5 days sounds like a nice break from walking.

However this choice does have me bypassing one of the best sections of the whole trail…. Tongariro Crossing. I have done it before so that made it easier. But it is worth doing again so I might hop back over and do that part but not the connector parts.

We went grocery shopping and bought lots of heavy food. But choices were still limited because we won’t have refrigeration.

It rained today and I spent much of it in a cafe with free wifi while updating my blog.

The other big news is that Brett is back with us and will be sharing a canoe with me down the river. He was ahead of us and had a splendid day around Tongariro. We texted him with our plans and convinced him to hitch back to meet us. Another TA walker, Chris from Hamilton, is joining us.

Nathan and Alex did an amazing job arranging our canoe trip. We are going with Taumarunui Canoe Hire which is a family run operation. They offer free camping the night before. When we got here they showed us a very clean container with bunks. We spent the evening fitting all our stuff into barrels which seal shut and will fit in the canoes.

Tomorrow should be fun.

Our container is on the left

Inside the container. Yay, Brett is back with us.

That's the river! And Chris's father's campervan.