Log
Date: March 14th
Weather: Sunny
Swell: 1M E
Wind: Variable 10knts
Distance: 20.4 NM
Camp: Papati beach
Back Country Cuisine Food Review
Meal: Jaime’s Battered Fish and Honey Soy Chicken
Impression: The fish was tasty and yummy as! Almost like from the fish and chip shop. Just used pancake mix and a bit of salt. The Honey Soy Chicken From Backcountry was great, looked awesome as soon as you opened the pack, smelt great and the flavor was very good. Quite sweet and no spice (even though the description says spicy!), lots of veggies, giving great colour and lots of chicken bits. Great!
Stars: 8 out of ten; I loved it and gave it 9, Dave liked it gave it a 7.5
Blog
We awoke in our cozy shack to the sound of roosters and the rattle of dog chains. I could have quite happily slept a lot longer, though Dave was up at 6.30am and up for a Coffee with H and his daughter. I got up just in time to say good bye to H and his daughter as he took her off to school at 7am.
“Come back at any time and stay as long as you like bro! thanks for staying with us it was great!” was H’s farewell to me. I was torn at this point, I felt we should keep going as the weather was so good, but part of me wanted to stay and experience more of the simple rural life here with H and his family. Of H went in his dusty little red car, of down the dirt road past the neighbors, with old caravans and steel water tanks on there sides in the over grown front yard, and out of sight.
We ended up having breakfast with H’s mum (who said we should just call her Mum) and Sister Joe. We had fresh smoked fish on bread and a cup of coffee, and talked about life and family in rural bay of plenty, East Cape area. Mum told us we should stop in a tell the local Whanua (family) in the area what we are doing and make sure they don’t mind us camping on the beach, just to make sure we don’t get run off, you see!
Thanking Mum for the breaky, we went off to move the boats down the beach and load them, then I went back up got some pears and said good bye to Mere, she gave me a big hug and wished us well!
The paddle was easy today, the winds very light and not that noticeable, I put the line in the water and caught a kawhai, and then Dave and I fished again, hoping to get a second 
one, I hooked up on a big one after we paddled through a school of about a hundred feeding upon the surface of a nice point. But the fish got off! Grrrr so annoying when you can see fish everywhere and they don’t jump on your line and say eat me! No extra fish today.
Come 4.30pm we pulled up on a nice shingle beach near a river, found a great spot to set up camp, went to walk to the nearby farm house to make sure it was ok, then found it was a huge hike around a large lagoon! “They can come see US, if they have a problem” I grumbled and we went back and set up camp. It was a great spot looking west over the bay 
of plenty and back to where we came. We bathed in the river and enjoyed getting the salt of and the bits clean, very nice after 5 days, then enjoyed a great battered fish dish ( which I made from pancake mix and some seasoned salt, fried in oil), followed by a back country cuisine meal and Pineapple lumps (a NZ confectionary of pineapple chewy candy covered in chocolate) for desert.
No one ever came to bother us, and we had a great evening, Dave went to bed early while I backed up video footage, then I sat and enjoyed the quite night, the waves lapping serenely on the shore, the birds squawking down the beach, the half full moon reflecting on the rippling water, ahhh what an awesome life!
I did some stretches, Boy the body takes a wooping on these trips, nothing bad just well used. Dave and I are both super lean paddling machines now! We can eat whatever we want and the body loves it and the weight keeps stripping off, though muscle does build and tone a lot as well. I am feeling strong, Dave and I both mentioned that we now feel like we could do this forever now, we have come a long way since arriving back in Auckland and saying “if this was now the end, we would be happy to stop now!” and now are cranking solid days and still feeling good and able. A day off would be good, though while the weather is so good and in our favor, we shall keep pushing it out and around the formidable East cape.
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