Well today is the day. Rather than taking the jet boat, we took the alternate route, which goes out to the highway and back in. This should save us 10 miles of slippery mud for 35 miles of extra riding.

We headed off, up the hill to the highway. This was a picturesque sealed road alongside a river. Once we reached the highway, we stopped at Raetihi, where we resupplied at the local Four Square. We ate a sandwich and then headed north along the highway. After only a couple of miles, we were off along another road to the track. We followed it, with nice rolling hills, until we reached the Mangapura track. This was the other end of the track the jet boat would have dropped us off at. On this end though, it was a well maintained farm track. We climbed up another big hill until we ran into a large tree across the track. Luckily, there were ATV tracks we could follow that got us around it and back on track. We then headed north along another track, now going back down. This was fun, if technical. Most of the mud had calmed down, but there still some harrowing bits. When we got to the bottom, the farm track turned into rolling single track along a ledge. It was beautiful, if a bit muddy and technical. Then it began to rain in heavy short bursts. The track then joined another farm track, which was just clay mud. My bike got completely covered in it to the point where the wheels wouldn’t spin. I had to take the bags off and pull out all the mud by hand.

Once we reached the campsite, we tried to go to the Blue Duck Cafe for a shower. Unfortunately, no one was there. A nice man said to just pay in the morning, and then a group in an ATV showed up, and the woman running the place huffily agreed to let us pay for a shower.

The DOC campsite was nice. We were able to clean off our bikes by filling a water bottle and squeezing the water onto the bikes. There was also a bunk house, where we dried our clothes.