resting in kerikeri

hi friends and family! i'll update in detail tomorrow (i believe bryan is also preparing a guest blog), but we just wanted to let you know that we arrived in kerikeri this afternoon with some very muddy gear and bodies that were much in need of a long...very long...shower. if my rough calculations are correct, we have completed about 125 miles in 11 days of hiking - much less than the 15 miles per day that we originally and naiively hoped for, but still a total that we're proud of. i'll leave you with one story that sticks out in my mind from this last section (ahipara to kerikeri):

the night before last, we were in the middle of a 23-mile section that was almost exclusively road-walking, meaning no campsites or hostels at which to park ourselves for the evening. we finished an adequate number of miles for the day along an old gravel logging road and, with dense bush on both sides and having seen no one on the road all day, pitched the tent on the side of the road in a grassy spot. around 10 pm, we heard a loud, explosive sound which sounded like a shotgun (though, to be fair, i take every loud noise to be a gun) and male voices coming up the road towards us. we stayed huddled in our sleeping bags, hoping that they wouldn't spot us, but as they passed our way, a teenage voice shouted, "what's that over there? is that a pup tent? who the hell would be sleeping out here?" and flashlights streamed in through the tent's thin nylon walls. when they asked if anyone was in the tent, i shouted a brief reply, and they soon stalked off down the road again.

about a half hour later, we heard the voices coming closer again, and waited to see if they would let us sleep (our bedtime is, at the latest, 8 pm) this time. just as they rounded the bend to stand on the road just above us, i heard another shot, close at hand, and someone saying "shoot, i missed". at the same time, the flashlight beams were targeted at our tent again and a young voice began quizzing us about whether we were tourists and where we were going. i expected another shot to pierce our tent walls and kill us there, along jackson road, at any minute. fortunately, bryan answered their questions satisfactorily and they eventually wandered back off into the night with a few shouts of "stay off our land!" they didn't return again, at least not while bryan kept watch (another 3-4 hours, i think - waking me up every time he bolted upright at some new unfamiliar sound).

what we've pieced together from our best guesses and a friendly interaction with, we think, a couple of the same guys the next morning is that they were just possum-hunting teenagers from the nearby maori settlement who happened to spot a possum near us on the road, which they shot at and missed. in the dead of night, in the isolation of the kiwi backcountry, and with the limited analysis that drowsiness provides, this casual encounter seemed like deadly peril.

hope you enjoyed our drama :) again, i'll update in more detail tomorrow. hope you're enjoying your labor day weekend!

rachel