Te Araroa: Telford Campsite to Bluff
A long way to walk.
“And how did you find the sun?” A pale man in a road biking get-up asked as I looked to the monument at the edge of the sea.
The yellow and white sign post pointing every which way and to the farthest corners of the earth, meant I’d reached the end of my 3000km journey across New Zealand. As usual, I felt relatively little when I reached out my hand and touched the only tangible thing that could signify the end of something so great.
“The sun?” I heard myself ask.
“Yes.”
I knew his eyes were on me, hidden as they were behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
“I suppose it was hot at times.”
“You look quite burnt.”
I wanted to tell him “burnt” was the least of it. If he knew how many rivers I’d forded and the horror of the one I’d fallen into, how many hundreds of miles of beach I’d walked, how many verges I trudged in the blazing heat, how many sandfly bites I endured, how many storms I weathered, how many feet of mud I wallowed in—but how could he know?
I asked him to take my picture. He cut my feet out of the frame in the first and the sign out of the frame in the second.
I turned to his wife and asked if she would take my picture. She told me of course, and laughed. Then she congratulated me on my walk and asked how I felt. I told her I wasn’t sure, but that I was hungry, which felt honest.
The photo she took was much better.
Day 99 (3/17/24): 29mi, +3258ft // 48km, +993m
Telford Campsite to Merrivale Hut
Mount Linton Station
Of this day, I wrote in my journal: “A mixed bag that ended on a high note, mostly because I deviated from the red line one final time.”
I woke up to a little bit of chaos. The other TA hikers—Keenan, Cassie, Rebecca and the French couple—were all determined to stay at Birchwood station, about 17 miles from Telford, that night. It was a private hut which had to be booked in advance and there were a limited number of spots available, not enough spots to include me. But I hadn’t planned ahead like they had, so I was not at all offended to be left out.
The downside? There was nowhere else legal to camp between here and Merriview Hut, 35 miles away.
I decided to just start walking and see what happened.
The walk across Mount Linton Station began as a wilderness trek, then turned into straight-up farm walk—which made sense, a station was a farm—this one host to a large contingent of sheep and a few cows.
The hills were rolling and green, and if you ignored the oily stink of ammonia and cow poop, the scenery was really quite lovely. It was so kind of the station owners to allow TA hikers passage across their property, and it was imperative we didn’t abuse their generosity by camping on private property or by deviating from the marked route. But it wasn’t always easy to stay on route, twice I missed a turn and had to backtrack a kilometer to an unmarked junction, consult my gps, and then proceed.
There weren’t many places to get water, and not for lack of streams and springs, but because each one was so polluted by livestock. I’ve hiked the Arizona Trail, so not much fazes me when it comes to grody water sources, but when a sheep carcass is actively decomposing in a creek, I’m probably going to skip that one.
There were several carcasses that day.
I enjoyed chatting to the cows as I walked. The calves stared at me curiously, appearing to listen, before veering wildly away and galloping off towards their mothers.
Part of me hoped I might have the energy to also walk the Woodlawn Track after Mount Linton, and make it to Merriview tonight. I didn’t have much of an option, really. I couldn’t stay at Birchwood and there was no where else to camp besides. But as the day wore on and the hills grew hillier and the bushes bushier and the mud slipperier, I knew I didn’t have it in me to push.
It wound up taking me 6 hours to hike across Mount Linton Station, as SideDump on FarOut said it might.
When I finally made it out to the sealed road, I took advantage of the sun and spread out my tent and my sleeping bag to dry, then sat on my pack and ate a late lunch. What to do? I wondered. Then I got busy consulting FarOut for options.
I could always walk the highway, I realized. It would be long, but not as demanding as Woodlawn which had a pretty big hill climb right off the bat. I crunched some numbers and decided a 29 mile day was realistic, a 35mile day which included another farm track was not.
So I walked the road and didn’t hate myself for it. The Woodlawn Station Track went through a farm owned by someone who was not stoked about TA hikers anyways, and I’d walked so many farm tracks already.
The highway wound up being really quite beautiful, flanked by startling green fields, dotted with yellow flowers. The sun was shining and a light breeze danced through the air.
I listened to music as I walked and sang loudly to no one. At one point, I belted Taylor Swift and then Dagny to some cows and they seemed awfully frightened. I didn’t blame them. I don’t have a great singing voice.
The point is, I was so happy and my feet, for once, felt light.
I’d been so rigid when I started the TA, rigid enough to ford the Rakaia River simply because I couldn’t imagine not walking a continuous line. And I had maintained a continuous line, until the Rangitata River, which is not part of the trail but I’d still hoped to cross it. It was in flood when I arrived, and so I chose to take a shuttle around. Then Lake Wakatipu at Queenstown, the trail ends on one side and picks up on the other, and no way did I want to walk that winding highway and get hit by a car, so I took a bus North to hike the Routeburn. And then before Te Anau I chose a gravel road over a harrowing bushwhack and river crossing. And now.
If anything, the TA was teaching me flexibility, to a certain extent. I was still very rigid in my desire to walk instead of hitch, but I was allowing myself to choose where I walked and that felt liberating.
When I reached Merriview, I was immediately overwhelmed by the number of tents and people. I’d caught the bubble—oh god oh god oh god—my worst nightmare come to fruition.
And the bubble partied hard that night, let me tell you.
We were all about to go into the Longwood Forest where we would literally swim through mud, and people were terrified and hyped. The music raged into the night, the hut shook, and I stayed hidden in my tent, completely antisocial for the most part.
I chatted briefly with a couple of hikers from the US when I first arrived; they had hiked other long trails, triple crowned even! Which I found really cool and it almost made me homesick for the Appalachian Trail. One of them, Wild Turkey from Virginia, had started hiking the TA just a day or two before me and I was surprised I hadn’t run into him until now.
But I didn't join the party. There was a time when I might have, but whether it was anxiety or curmudgeonly-ness or just plain old exhaustion, I stayed in my tent. I enjoyed listening to the music, though, and I think I might have caught a second hand high from all the stoke and nerves crackling in the air.
I slept fitfully as strong winds buffeted my tent. I felt so much trepidation about entering the Longwoods the next day. I’d seen videos of hikers literally swimming through mud and couldn’t begin to wrap my head around how such a “trail” could exist.
All I could do was walk it, or swim it, whatever the trail asked of me, I knew I would do it.
Day 100 (3/18/24): 18.55mi, +4446ft // 31km, +1356m
Merrivale Hut to Martins Hut (The Longwood Forest)
The sweetest, mintiest hallway of Eucalyptus
I left Merriview Hut behind a few hikers and ahead of a lot more. My pace was quick, fueled by nerves and curiosity over what had to be the most infamous section of the TA. Would I drown in mud today? Would I get lost in a bog and never find my way to Bluff? These were the important questions I was dying to know the answers to.
The initially pleasant walk through a steamy, delicious smelling eucalyptus tunnel in light rain, caused me to drop my guard a bit. The Longwoods wouldn’t be so scary, I told myself. I’d done so many other hard things already, the next twenty plus miles wouldn’t be anything new.
Beech Tree Leaves in the Longwood Forest
I think it is safe to say, I was not prepared to be that cold and wet. I was scared, to tell you the truth, scared I would become hypothermic, scared that I was doing permanent damage to my feet with a non-freezing cold injury, scared that I would never get out of the forest—that the thigh-deep, icy hell I struggled through, would never end.
Horrific, mesmerizing, enchanting, bone chilling, nausea inducing—I was too cold to eat, too cold to drink water, too cold and wet to stop in the freezing, sideways rain to put a layer on. The weather was relentless, the day brutally cold and windy. The rain felt like icy needles pelting my skin after falling for a million miles, gaining speed on the descent.
I was maxing out in a major way, pushing against my ceiling of tolerance just as I had in Patagonia—cold and wet as I was then, I was a million times colder and wetter now.
I cried into the storm, whimpered when I fell face first in a waterfall of mud, hands plunging into a hidden trellis of roots, feet tangled in more roots, sinking, sinking. I scrambled for invisible handholds, pulled back fistfuls of mud. I fell more times than I could count, hands and feet numb, body shaking.
Sounds dramatic and, set to the howling wind and bitter cold rain, it was.
A river of mud on a rainy day in the Longwood Forest
I won’t say, looking back, that I “should” have handled my mental state differently, stayed more positive, panicked less. I know I did the best I could. And now, if I ever trudge a day similar to my first day in the Longwoods again, I will be better equipped to deal with the adversity.
The first time is usually the hardest.
Kingdom of moss blanketing an enchanted forest
I wound up sharing a few miles with Wild Turkey, a triple crowner and FKTer; his lightheartedness was contagious and helped me turn a corner mentally in the final miles of the day. He’d hiked the Florida Trail and waded through mud deeper than the Longwoods, which I found impossible to wrap my head around. He told me I should hike the Florida Trail, too, someday, and I thought no, I probably did not want to do that.
A strange thing happened, though. Amid all of Wild Turkey’s levity, I got the strange sense that we were not on the same page. I would say something and his response would indicate that he heard something completely different than what I intended. I struggled to follow his logic on most topics, too.
The real issue, I realize now, after a strange and negative dealing with him in an online capacity, is that Wild Turkey perhaps hasn’t taken the time to educate himself in a meaningful way on real world issues, and so our conversations in the mud were rather two dimensional and uninspired.
There are two distinct “summits” the TA climbs over in the Longwoods, followed by a climb up a long, exposed ridge. By the time I reached the ridge and all of its waist deep, muddy potholes, I was frozen to the bone. The wind howled in my ears and wrenched at my raincoat. My fingers were bloodless and white.
I very much wanted the struggle to be over by the time I began the descent to Martin’s Hut.
I smelled the wood smoke first, and a few steps later saw the rickety wooden hut through the mist and the trees. I knew there wouldn’t be space in the hut for me, and that was fine, I planned to find a campsite somewhere in the trees instead, even though I was sure my tent was soaked through from the rain the night before.
I hiked steeply uphill behind the hut at Wild Turkey’s suggestion, and found a very lumpy, slanting, unofficial spot cleared previously by another camper. I threw my tent up as quick as I could, and crawled inside.
It was wet but not soaking wet, and I finally allowed myself a few tears. They were tears of relief, more than anything else, today had been really hard for me and I thought that was important to acknowledge. I throw myself at challenges left and right on long hikes, pretending like I don’t ever get scared would be a mistake.
The cold and wet are especially hard categories for me, areas of weakness, if you will. And I know by surviving the Longwoods on a cold, wet day I’ve grown a little stronger.
Mud on my face even AFTER I wiped it
I heard excited voices down the hill and exited my tent to see what the fuss was about.
Burgers! Orange Man, a former thru-hiker and local to Bluff and Riverton, hiked up 50kg worth of food, a grill, propane, condiments and drinks! I couldn’t believe it. This had to be the best trail magic ever. We all stood around in the mud, eating and laughing, the troubles of my day suddenly a distant memory.
Burgers courtesy of Orange Man, a New Zealand local and past year thru-hiker, who trains in the Longwoods year round
Later that night, as I huddled in my sleeping bag, sticky and damp, I decided I would take a day off in Riverton. It seemed crazy, to zero so close to the end of the trail, but I’d found this sweet cottage called the Whimsical Studio on the FarOut app, and managed to book it for two nights with the little cell service I had.
I wanted to put some space between me and this giant group of other hikers, and embrace a little solitude before the conclusion of my walk.
Day 101 (3/18/24): 19mi, +1642ft // 31.6km, +500m
Martin’s Hut to the Whimsical Studio in Riverton
The view from my tent the next morning—sunshine!
Sun broke through the dense foliage and lit a happy glow on the material of my tent. I couldn’t believe there was any sun left in the world, after all the rain and dreariness of the day before.
I packed up quickly, jamming wet gear into my pack haphazardly, knowing I’d have a chance to dry it out when I arrived at the studio that night.
I was ready for the mud this time, and managed to keep a smile on my face the whole morning, even as I sunk knee and thigh deep into squelchy bogs of viscous sludge.
Orange Man told us last night that the trail through the Longwoods isn’t always so muddy, that over the winter it is actually completely firm. The reason it turns boggy is because of the TA hikers—because of us—pounding up and down it the whole summer season. Our foot traffic destroys the delicate, woven network of fibers supporting the dirt and roots, making the ground more susceptible to standing water. Basically, by walking on it, we turn the trail to liquid.
I contemplated my impact here in the Longwoods and also on the North Island—a potential vector for the spread of Kauri Dieback Disease—perpetrated by my feet. I didn’t like to think about my walks doing damage, but I had to acknowledge that nothing I did was without impact. For better or worse, the thing I loved doing was guaranteed to leave a mark.
The stoke was high when we found a second round of trail magic at Turnbull’s Hut (the last hut of the trail!), also provided by Orange Man
The hardest part of the day was putting on my damp, mud-clotted socks and cold, wet shoes. After that, there was a little more mud to contend with.
At least the sun was out.
Magic Hat navigating one of the final mud-holes of the Longwoods.
I emerged from the forest after about 6 more miles of mud, and then began the road walk to Colac Bay where I stopped briefly to grab food at the restaurant and dry out some of my heavier, waterlogged belongings. A lot of other hikers were sitting at a table inside, but I opted for the empty seating area outside because the sun and the breeze were dry and lovely.
Plenty of people, including Wild Turkey, were staying at the Holiday Park in Colac Bay, and then pushing all the way to Invercargill tomorrow; I was happy about my choice to zero in Riverton and escape the bubble.
The remainder of the way to Riverton was alternately beach and bluff walking. I startled a few sheep, slipped in some mud, and got stabbed in the face by a few giant, spiky plants—over all it was quite pleasant.
I would love to tell you I had some deep insight after making it through the Longwoods, that I thought deep thoughts as I tramped across the sand that afternoon, out from under the dark canopy of the forest, staring wistfully out to sea, but I didn’t.
I felt like I’d survived something, but couldn’t for the life of me connect with any deeper emotion than relief.
Mostly, I was tired.
I began to wonder, at this point, if I was overtrained, fatigued on a deeper level than a couple nights of good sleep could cure.
But what was there to do besides walk? It was all I knew how to do at this point.
Day 102 (3/20/24): zero day
Whimsical Studio, Riverton
On my day off I walked 2 miles into the town of Riverton from the Whimsical Studio—truly a place of whimsy—for a small resupply. Beyond that I laid in bed, looking through photos of my hike and rereading excerpts from my journal. I talked to Logan on the phone, and my parents. I did laundry. I napped.
I had 45miles left to walk between Riverton and Bluff—two more days. I was ready.
Day 103 (3/21/24): 22mi, +170ft // 36.6km, +52m
Riverton to Southern Comfort Backpackers in Invercargill
I woke up at 7AM to my alarm, and even as I shut it off I knew the only thing I wanted was to lay in bed all day. I tidied up the space and put money in the microwave, as directed, to pay for my stay.
I made six egg and cheese sandwiches, ate three, and packed the rest away to eat later in the day (I am laughing as I write this, SIX sandwiches! I was so hungry. When I am not actively thru-hiking its hard to comprehend the quantity of food I am capable of eating.)
I walked through town, past the school, into the woods, then out onto the beach.
Birds erupted from damp, tide-rippled sand, swooping low over lapping waves. The sun had only just cleared the horizon, all was serene. I looked across the sea and wondered if I was looking at Rakiura // Stewart Island, or just another peninsula at the southern foot of the South Island.
The sand underfoot was hard and packed, perfect for walking, and I was grateful for easy miles. I had one final tidal river crossing to catch at low tide, but I knew I’d be late—worse than late—I’d probably arrive right at high tide.
I arrived at the mouth of the river at 11, forty minutes before high tide—not an ideal margin for error—but at this point, I would do whatever it took to get across, nothing would get between me and Bluff.
Hiking upstream a short distance, I found a place to cross where the currents didn't appear confused. I waited for the tide to suck out into the sea the way I thought it might, and stepped in.
I couldn’t see the bottom—not surprising in this type of river crossing—and I stepped cautiously, worried I might hit a deep spot and plunge in over my head. The brackish water swirled murkily around my legs as I walked, but never rose higher than mid-thigh, and in a few short moments, I was standing on a bank of sand on the other side.
One final river crossing, you can see the mouth of the river, here, pouring into the ocean. As the tide comes in, it forces water upstream, causing the river to swell and become deeper.
After 15.5mi of beach walking, I joined a bike path and headed towards the town of Otatara. I saw a few other walkers carrying large packs, but kept to myself.
My surroundings became more industrial the closer I got to Invercargill, and when I reached the point at which I would depart from the trail and walk to my accommodation for the night, I found I barely had the energy to get myself there.
The Pak n’ Sav was 2.2km away, where I planned to purchase ingredients for dinner before heading to the hostel; the distance felt insurmountable.
I dropped my pack in the shade of a tree, on a grassy patch next to the busy highway and sunk down to the ground. As the end drew relatively nearer, the distance seemed to grow in unfathomable ways.
I felt nothing and everything. Relieved and full of despair. I could have slept there, in the grass, by the roadside, using my pack—which smelled like a moldering corpse—for a pillow and my raincoat for a blanket. I could have closed my eyes and dreamed, without a care in the world for what anyone thought as they drove by my huddled form in repose.
Bluff mattered still, and it also did not. The miles warped and stretched behind my eyelids, those 20-something remaining morphing into 500 until I was crushed under the weight of them.
But I was cold, I wanted another shower, I wanted to change into my fleece and curl up in a bed, not on the damp grass. So I rose, I walked another one and a half miles to do my errands and reach my accommodation. I washed my tired body, fed my hungry mouth, and I slept.
Day 104 (3/22/24): 23mi, +1592ft // 38km, +485m
Invercargill to Bluff (the end!)
I woke up at the Southern Comfort Backpackers—a cozy house surrounded by flowers and a well tended lawn—and kept to myself. Other hikers were departing for the trail, Keenan, who arrived shortly after me, was zeroing.
I felt suddenly awkward around all the other hikers, wishing I could vanish into an alternate dimension and walk these final miles in another world, entirely alone. I avoided making eye contact with everyone but Keenan as I made breakfast. We chatted a little, but he looked as exhausted as I felt so, ultimately, we didn’t say much.
When I stepped out into the gloomy morning, I felt swallowed by grey, insulated from every other soul in the world, as if wishing it had made it so. I zipped my raincoat up to my chin, cinched the hood around my face, and began the walk back to the trail, stopping once at an ATM and then again in a coffee shop for a long black.
The sky spit rain all morning and soon I was coated head to toe in mist. I stopped to pee in the tall stands of grass lining the trail often, too often, and at one point I huddled in a clump of bushes to eat left over pasta out of a ziplock bag, leftovers from dinner the night before.
The track hugged the edge of an estuary for several miles, then wrapped around a sewage treatment plant. The smell wasn’t ideal, but the path was smooth gravel and left nothing for me to complain about. Finally the trail joined a sealed path that ran along the side of SH1, a very loud highway.
Massive logging and livestock trucks ripped by at deafening speeds, so loud and so close I didn't even bother with an audio book because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear much. This was the final march.
As the path neared the town of Bluff, cars honked occasionally as they passed, in recognition of the end of a hiker’s long journey.
My right foot began to hurt the day before and it was really talking to me now. The pain was so sharp and intense I was positive something was broken. When I took my shoe off at lunch to inspect the exterior of my foot, I noticed swelling around my 5th metatarsal. I prodded the hot swell of flesh delicately and winced. It hurt. But what was there to do? I was within 10 miles of the end, I couldn’t stop now.
I slowed my pace a little to ease the stabbing ache and worried about what the end would be like. I worried there would be a ton of other hikers at the monument, a ton of hikers who knew each other and shared a million funny stories and mishaps between them. I worried it would make me feel so alone.
It is obvious now, the reason I prefer solitude. When no one is around, I am not reminded of my aloneness. I am content with it. When I am confronted by a “clique”, it highlights my chosen aloneness in an unpleasant way. Suddenly I am not just by myself, I am othered.
Aloneness is beautiful until it is pressed up against togetherness, at which point it could be stigmatized—marked as shameful. There must be something wrong with a person who opts for solitude over companionship, right? In such instances, I wonder if I have gotten it all wrong.
And then I remember the social pains of middle and high school, of being left out, picked last, excluded, and I know in my heart the ability to set goals, make a plan, and progress along a path independently is a strength I am lucky to have honed. In many ways, a willingness to go alone is the ultimate freedom, a hall-pass to anywhere.
After passing the “BLUFF” sign, I joined a grassy farm track and proceeded to climb a series of complicated styles—ladders, really. I heaved my tired body over the fences and then lowered myself slowly back down to earth. The five miles between me and monument felt like a far distance to go.
The views opened up after I climbed the last ladder. How strange the world felt just then, like I was standing at Cape Reinga just yesterday, blinked, and now suddenly I was here, at the bottom of the country, staring out at the sea.
The near 1900 miles behind me felt shorter, more compressed, than the five still before me and suddenly, time made no sense. I felt no anticipation, no regret, no anxiety and no fear; I wasn’t happy or sad—not numb, exactly, though maybe something close. I didn’t want anything. I wasn’t full of hope or pride. I was empty, a bowl ready—but not waiting—to be filled.
I have a history of grand, sweeping emotion; long have I lived in a weather beaten sea of feeling, towed along by unseen currents, shaping the events and the narrative of my life. I wonder sometimes, if I was ever the captain of a ship, ill built for seas as rough as these, or if I’d always been floating in open water.
Standing in the waving grass, at the edge of something great and incomprehensible, a sliver of awareness opened within me.
I fear the end of big hikes, of being confronted by the strange, unsettling emptiness. I fear feeling nothing when everything around me screams I should feel something—something good, something hopeful, some sense of pride.
I read a book a long time ago called Everything Falls Apart, by Pema Chödrön, in it she calls hope a crutch, and says “as long as hope exists, we will ceaselessly look for some form of security. Only if we are willing to give up hope, will this need for security leave us, because then we will have the courage to relax into the groundlessness of the situation.”
At the end of a long hike there is nothing left to hope for. A monument signals a cessation of striving and the opening of a brief window of peace.
I do not know how to carry the peace I find at the end, with me into my life, or if I want to, because it is not the same peace sold to the masses, it is isn't comfortable, quiet, or warm. It exists within chaos, hurt, and fear, it lays dormant in destruction, nestled tightly against cynicism and yes, even hope and enthusiasm and striving. Peace is everywhere for us to find, a small step to the left or right of the path most commonly taken, it holds hands with uncertainty, and persists even as our worlds crumble and are rebuilt.
Peace is a choice, a subtle acknowledgement that we lack control over the presumed good or supposed bad, it is simply a way to weather both, to keep our keels level as we travel through any type of storm.
And I would be lying if I said it didn’t terrify me. I don’t want to give up my ocean of emotion, my passion or my hope. I believe those elements are what keep me here, on this earth. Even so, the sliver of understanding which struck me, standing on a bluff looking out at the sea, caused me to wonder if it wasn’t either-or, all or nothing, if I could keep my ocean and embrace peace amid the roiling sea.
On a bluff, but not the bluff, I encounter a girl who takes my photo. She is alone and the edges of our aloneness brush together. She will follow me to a fish and chips shop after I have been and gone to the monument. She will sit down next to me in the fish and chips shop and not say a word. I will say something, I will fill the emptiness because I am made uncomfortable by her silence. And then I will leave and wonder what that was, why she came and sat down next to me without a word, and I will worry it is because she sensed something in me that was also in her. I will worry my emptiness leaked out, left a trail behind me, and called to a similar emptiness in her, that she followed me because she thought I had some answers, but I did not. I still do not.
I ascended into a forest, climbed to the top of a hill, hiked past an observation tower, and was visited by Pīwakawaka one final time. The bird with tail feathers like a fan, who refused to tell Māui where her ancestor hid the fire and was squeezed by Māui so hard her tail nearly popped off. The tiny forest messenger who stood up to a demi god and, though changed, survived, had seen fit to bid me a last farewell before the end.
Pīwakawaka, the fantail; a blurry photo of a being in constant motion
I remember walking through a tunnel of green and stepping out into the light. I remember my heart beating harder walking at sea level merited. I remember seeing the monument and touching it, wondering if I had done it well enough—the walk—if I had honored the path the way I intended to. I remember smiling for some photos.
There were no other hikers at the monument. No people who understood the magnitude of Te Araroa in any real way. And I think that might be the best sort of ending, after all, one with little fanfare.
Walking is a constant in my life, a common thread I pick up and put down, over and over again. The end of one walk is not a hard stop, it’s more of a transition zone, like the tide going slack between trips in and out. In the narrow window of time between ending and beginning, I might experience the sort of emptiness Pema Chödrön writes about, an emptiness so terrifying and confounding, so vast and unfamiliar, it can only be peace.
Between December 10, 2023 and March 22, 2024, I tramped the length of New Zealand's 3033km long trail, Te Araroa, from Cape Reinga to Bluff. The walk took 104 days.
The most delicious fish and chips of the trip
The most colorful hostel on the trail
Thank you for sticking with me on Te Araroa, a transformative adventure that ripped my heart wide open—so wide, it may never heal—not that I want it to. Not ever. Not really.
