Trail Food

Food is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. Hiking almost every day for a month makes you ravenous. Whenever we hit a grocery store, we buy all sorts of outrageous, heavy, spoilable things to consume immediately. Whole bags of potato chips, quarts of milk, and kilograms of kiwis have disappeared in a blink of an eye. And all without an ounce of guilt - both of us have lost weight on this trip, and need as many calories as we can get.

Days 36-38: Rest and Perspective

We've spent the last 2 days resting at a very nice AirBnB in Frankton (near Hamilton), at the home of a Chinese couple who recently moved here to start a carpentry business. While in Mercer, we decided to skip about 80 km ahead on the trail to rest in Hamilton, which is a larger city with many more options for accommodations and shopping than the smaller towns north of here. We're unhappy about skipping any of the trail, and have vowed to come back and do this section before we leave the country, but it was the best of several bad options.

Days 30-35: A Marathon and a Forest Crawl

Another 5 days down, another 120 km behind us. We're up to kilometer 720, and are approaching the one quarter mark on the trail.

Days 23-29: Back to Where We Started

We've arrived back in Auckland! 600 km down, only 2400 more to go. It only took a few hours on a few buses to get from here to our starting point, but it took us more than 3 weeks to get back on foot. I can confidently say that the foot route is much more interesting though.

Days 20-22: Ocean Beach, Bream Head, Waipu

Wow, what a packed few days we've had! We covered some serious ground and have come 90 kms in 2.5 days (although we didn't actually walk quite that many - read on). We also had some amazing views, a great campsite, and a 60th birthday party! We've come about 425 total kms so far, and have probably about a week to go before we hit Auckland.

Days 14-19: Down the Coast

We arrived in Ngunguru yesterday, and are taking a rest day here at the Riverbank Homestay with amazing hosts Hilton & Melva Ward. They maintain (on a volunteer basis) nearby parts of the trail, and offer free camping to any Te Araroa trampers. After 2 days off in Kerikeri, we've come another 115km, for a total of 335km, and passed two significant waypoints on our way here: 10% (300 km) of the trail completed! and we walked all the way across the country (the easy way - west to east)!

Days 6-11: Forest, Forest, Forest, Road

So, we've finished another 120 kms of the trail, and are now in Kerikeri, a decently sized town near the east coast of NZ. This brings us up to 220 kms total, or 7.3% of the whole trail. This stat is alternately encouraging ("We're almost up to 10% and feels like we just started!") and scary ("220 kms felt like a long way and we've barely made a dent!").