Not my best day so far. While it started out well with a lift into town from the holiday park, a cranberry and chicken pie in a cafe, and a surprise gift of chocolate oranges, mini Bombay gins and a Christmas card from Luke's parents, my day soon plummeted into something not so great.
First of all, our camera, which still won't charge despite buying a new battery for $80 and having a new charger sent all the way from England, was all packaged up to send home before we were told it would cost $85 to post home. We decided against it of course and are still carrying the extra 500g of inoperable electronics.
Then, just as we started our 30km for the day, I realised I'd forgotten my walking poles. I called the holiday park who thankfully had someone on the way in to town so had to wait 20minutes for those to be delivered.
We finally started off on the highway out of Wanganui when an old lady beeped at us and shouted out the window 'have a safe trip!' She pulled over a few meters down the road and offered us 5 big oranges- we took two but had to decline the rest for not wanting to carry them. She cheered me up and gave me a little more will for the road walk we had ahead of us.
BUT the will did not last...the road just went on and on and on. We had to keep jumping up on the bank when cars came, and our ankles were turning on the road camber - my boots, which I'd traded back instead of my shoes in Wanganui, were rubbing my feet again, and on top of it all, I felt VERY homesick.
We had walked for about 24km when Luke stopped and turned to me to ask if I was ok. I looked at him honestly, and decided I couldn't stifle my cry any longer. I burst out crying and I think I said something along the lines of 'I am happy, I'm fine, I'm just feeling like I need to cry, and I don't know what's even wrong because I'm fine and I just need you to keep cuddling me...' and on it went. He laughed at me a bit, and thankfully I laughed at me a bit too.
I managed to compose myself just in time to catch Olli and Renee at the Antiques shop and cafe for a cold drink.
The cafe, while nice to put our feet up, would be best described as my sister Zoe's worst nightmare. There clowns with missing eyes, weird mannequins dressed in old veils, and old baby dolls with their heads facing in all weird directions- even after 24km of walking Zoe probably wouldn't stop- if I hadn't have had to have carried it, I'd have bought her a souvenir.
The next 8km to the canoe site were straight forward enough on a smaller road but I was struggling nonetheless with sore feet and a tired head. Luke kindly let me know it was only 2km to go until the camp site but I didn't feel like 2km was close enough so I had another cry and told Luke to go on ahead (which he never does... he creeps around a corner so I can't see him anymore and then waits for me there.) I took my bag off, had a ten minute strop to myself and sent a text home to let them know I missed them and I then sulked until the camp site where I threw my boots angrily on the floor and recovered with a hot shower and the chocolate orange from Mark and Donna - thank you Mark and Donna!!
We ate tea before going down to the black sand beach to watch the sun set- it was amazing.
I've never seen a beach like it. The sand, obviously, was jet black with little sparkles glistening all through it, the waves were crashing in hard, and the whole beach was scattered with huge pieces of driftwood. The wind was blowing so hard that there was a constant spray of sand across the surface of the beach. We got sand stuck in all of our clothes but it looked amazing nonetheless. We left a message in the 'leave a thought' box as you leave the beach and snuggled up in our tent which has actually started to feel like our little home now, stinky and smothered in mud as it is.
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