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Monthly Archives: December 2016

Te Araroa Day 5-8: Ahipara to KeriKeri

Day 5: Left Ahipara around 5:45 AM after first breakfast and went to the small store a mile or so from the hostel. Had to wait around until 7:30 for it to open, so did some yoga and calisthenics while I waited. Met Sarah from New Hampshire just before the store opened and we both grabbed some (more) breakfast and resupply for the next few days, then roadwalked together to the start of the Herekino Track. This is her first thru-hike and we talked and out how much people change after a thruhike, whether it is their 5th or their first.… Read more

Categories: New Zealand, Te Araroa/North Island Hiking | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Te Araroa Day 1-4: Cape Reinga to Ahipara

Day 1- After leaving KeriKeri, it took me all day and about 20 different rides to get to the beginning of the Te Araroa at Cape Reinga. I met an 80 year old man born and raised in KeriKeri, another Te Araroa hiker sectioning from KeriKeri to Cape Reinga, a woman from Te Whau who brought me back to her house for bread, cheese, coffee, and stories of Papua New Guinea in the 1970’s, a woman originally from Hungary who has been in New Zealand now for many years, an English couple on holiday, a half dozen older white men who asked me what I thought of Donald Trump then told me I was wrong, a mom with her 2 kids in the back who told me about how sand pines were planted on the Aupori Peninsula to allow for agricultural development and how the swamps are sometimes drained for the harvest of Kauri logs, a young Maori girl who brought me a short way to Te Kao and dropped me off at her mom’s store, and finally (after being warned that now that it was after 8pm I wasn’t going to get picked up and I should look for camp) I got picked up by a French couple that brought me all the way to Cape Reinga in their rental van.… Read more

Categories: New Zealand, Te Araroa/North Island Hiking | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment