Te Araroa Stats

I plan to write more about our overall impressions and feelings about the Te Araroa, as well as some tips for people considering it, but for now, it’s just the facts. Anyone who knows me knows I keep track of as many trail statistics as I can! So here you go, the Te Araroa in…

The South Island Stats

Before we leave for Stewart Island, I wanted to give you a few statistics. I will do a grand summary of the entire trail shortly, but here’s the South Island summary! 1308 kilometers / 812 miles ***this is what the map says, but our GPS shows that we did 1407 kilometers!! 56 days 3 zero days…

Day 111: Zero Day in Queenstown

We thoroughly enjoyed our zero day in Queenstown and will be hitting the trail Wednesday for the last 325 kilometers (roughly 200 miles) left of the trail! Holy cow!! The home stretch is real! We mostly took care of town tasks and relaxed around the awesome hostel (Adventure Queenstown). It was pretty chilly out and…

Midpoint Gear Review

We had hoped to get this up in Wellington as we finished the North Island, but better late than never! As we said in previous posts, we consider ourselves lucky when it comes to gear. We’ve met a lot of hikers on the TA who are unhappy with their gear (mostly because they want to…

Day 66-68: Zero Days

We have THOROUGHLY enjoyed our days off in Wellington, then Picton. It had been the perfect mix of chores (resupply, laundry, blogging, phone calls, etc), rest, calorie-loading and playing tourists. Food, food and more food Our Wellington hosts, Carole and Tony, were incredible. We shared several meals with them, including homemade fish and chips and…

Ode To The North Island

As I said in my last post, we have finished the North Island (NI) section of the Te Araroa (TA), all 1686 kilometers (or 1076 miles)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a difference 65 days has made…a little tanner, bug bitten and muscular… Please excuse the excess of exclamation points. I simply cannot overstate my enthusiasm for finishing…