• Te Araroa Day 61
• Whanganui to Palmerston North – 1 hour 30 minutes by bus
• Palmerston North city centre to airport – 5 km in 1 hour

I checked out of the hostel this morning and walked back along beside the river to the bus stop and i-SITE visitor’s centre. I browsed the brochures thinking Whanganui seemed like a cool little town to come back and visit, and read up a bit more on the cycle trails, and river journey options. The visitor’s centre had a huge diorama of the Tongariro Crossing and surrounding mountains, and it felt funny to look at it and realise how far I’d walked since Taumarunui!

At the bus stop I stumbled across another solo female TA hiker, going North. I was a bit surprised and immediately couldn’t help but think what was ahead of her… how chilly it had been at times for me coming through the central North Island, and remembering that the Tongariro Holiday Park were closing for a month soon etc. Then there were the feral dogs on the loose up at Cape Reinga, bedbugs on the Whanganui River Journey, as well as more recent Kauri dieback forest track closures in Northland. I asked how the Tararuas had been as they were now top of mind for me, and she said fine but lonely with 4 nights in huts alone. We wished each other well, and I jumped on the bus hoping for not so many winding roads on today’s ride.

It was only an hour and a half through to Palmerston North, and I was excited to get there. When I last saw my parents before this trip, they were looking forward to coming to visit me somewhere along the way. We vaguely thought about Whanganui, and although we never spoke about it, I think we were all reluctant to make concrete plans before I started my trip because who knew how far I’d actually get! In the meantime, Dad had got quite busy building a woolshed on the farm ruling him out. It also became really tricky to plan meeting up, not knowing how the weather would pan out with the Tongariro Crossing and when I might actually get to Whanganui. Plan B was perhaps catching up in Whakapapa or National Park with Mum catching the train up, but school holidays being busy and transit logistics from Dunedin resulted in Plan C – meeting up in Palmy! It meant a lot to me that Mum was willing to organize a trip and jump on a plane pretty much the next day at such short notice. I fretted that Palmy would be boring, and wondered what we would do for 3 days. I’d only ever visited the airport before, passing through with athletics, and certainly hadn’t thought of the city as a minibreak destination before!

My bus got in at 12:30pm, with Mum’s flight arriving at 1:30pm. It was too early for me to check in at our motel, and somehow that wasn’t how I’d imagined meeting up anyway. I decided the best thing to do was to walk to the airport with my pack to meet Mum in authentic TA style! With the latest 4kg of food on board my pack was a bit heavy, but after a few days of no walking it was definitely time to stretch the legs again. My heart was bursting watching Mum come across the tarmac, and it was one of the best hugs. I think she was a bit surprised I wasn’t looking scruffier and more worse for wear. I showed her where the sleeves of my walking top were ripping on both sides from my pack straps, just to reassure her I had actually been out in the wilderness!

The last time I’d been able to do any washing was before the Tongariro Crossing, so I scampered over excitedly to the motel’s machine. Mum had also bought up my jeans and shoes that I’d had in Auckland and I enjoyed the novelty of different clothes. I proudly showed off my hiker tan lines on my legs from the socks and shorts. Of course there were also treats a plenty as she unpacked, including homemade sourdough bread which I was really missing.

This Neat Places Guide to Palmerston North seemed to have some cool things on it, and even though it was a public holiday we headed into the city centre for a wander to see if anything was open and find some dinner. I’d been looking forward to visiting the Be Free Grocer for some plastic-free shopping for most of the hike, and it certainly didn’t disappoint with an excellent variety of food, and some very thought provoking information:

How can you not take action in the face of statistics like these? If you would like some ideas on small changes you can make, this page is a great place to start.

To round out the day, I ate way too much for dinner at a nice Afghani restaurant, promptly felt sick, and enjoyed watching Michael Palin on TV rather than doing any blogging on the laptop Mum had kindly bought up. Apologies that the blogging wheels really fell off at this point!