• Te Araroa Day 34
• Rest Day!
• TA ice cream count: 8

First highlight of today: wearing something other than my two sets of clothes! Thanks everyone for encouraging me to bother organising a pair of jeans, favourite stripey t-shirt, and shoes to Auckland – it was totally worth it 😊 in more good news, the jeans don’t seem too loose, so hopefully I’m maintaining weight!

Other highlights: eating and interesting conversations. Japanese was on the menu at lunch, followed by a visit to a chocolate cafe, then Ailie made a hearty lasagne for dinner. She’d asked if there was anything that I was craving, and I said no but in my head I secretly hoped for pasta, so it was perfect!

Today’s conversation topics ranged from culture over lunch to language and linguistics at dinner, followed up by self driving cars and the fascinating question of conciousness.

Tomorrow is looking rainy again so I’ve decided against attempting 43km and taken Cyril up on his offer to drop me off a little closer. Then I’m going to walk ‘north bound’ for a day towards Onehunga where I finished the other day.