Martin and I left Paihia the next day and caught the ferry across the bay. It poured on us for about an hour and I was beginning to dread the day when the sun came out and dried us off. We entered a new forest and bush wacked for a long while before I realized Martin wasn't behind me and I was lost. I tried to find the trail for about 20 minutes when Martin finally came out of the forest. Together we were lost for another hour before finding the poorly marked trail again and walking 4km down a river. We popped out of the forest a few hours later and had to endure some dangerous road walking. I was still trying to catch some friends so I pushed it and did 44km that day, which Martin's feet weren't too happy about. We spent the afternoon climbing steep hills, swearing, and laughing our asses off. We got to a campsite where we met three other tramped who had hiked the PCT in 2013. We had dinner and got to know each other before drifting off to bed. I woke up the next morning early and packed up. I was going to put in another big day so I left the rest of them at camp and got moving. After getting lost on three separate occasions, they caught up to me and I decided to stay with them for a bit. We stopped on the road to grab a cold soda and found out about a sea kayak trip that would take us through part of the trail so we looked into it. Wanting to rest our feet for a day and still make progress, we decided to go for it and made our way into the next town where we would start the trip the next morning. On arrival we ran into my friends and got them to come with us on the trip. We had an absolute blast. Splashing each other, messing with each others rutters, and laughing all day long. My abs hurt from the hilarity of the day. We got back on trail and hiked down to a beach where we set up camp for the night and spent the evening swapping stories around the fire. I woke up early the next morning to catch the sunrise, which was spectacular. We got moving and made our way through an incredibly gorgeous section of trail. My achilies started to hurt me on the way down and I knew it wouldn't be a good thing. On the other side we hitched into town and got some food and a resupply before heading to the holiday park to sleep for the night. The next day we got up and walked into another town where we are hanging for the day and losing motivation to go on at all. My ankle is still killing me so I'm enjoying the rest. Hoping it goes away soon. Kilometer 420