I can smell myself, the way one smells when one has spent a few days in the bush. A smell that, when I’m alone, I don’t seem to notice at all. Yet here I am, in the midst of washed and parfumed people, civilized people who all go about a daily routine that does not allow them to look like me.
We had a beautiful summer day to get a few miles on the beach behind us. The weather was glorious and the feet did well. Somehow the slim 15 kilometers along the beach dragged on. The tide was at its maximum towards the end.
Mud and water from below as well as from above awaited us on this stage. Unexpected hardships lay ahead of us, which we now consider mastered
My injured right foot has not allowed me to continue hiking. Therefore a Zero day was called for me. All the others in my group wanted to take one anyway, so I promptly decided to hitchhike to Kaitaia as well and spend the day there eating, reading and shopping for food.
Nine hundred miles seems to be an exaggeration due to a measurement error. As I understand it, horses, or rather the endurance of them, were used in the past to measure distances. An average horse probably made it to 30 miles per day. The one used to measure this beach in the north of New Zealand did more like 30 km a day.
