Te Araroa : Retrospective

Tree hugging.

So, have had a month to recover from this, some sort of retrospective seems to be in order.  Not least I should pull my finger out and do this before going off on further adventures, which I may start doing shortly.

Well then, positives first.  I certainly don't regret doing Te Araroa, it was an incredible experience.  The landscape of New Zealand is truly awe inspiring, the flora and fauna fascinating, and both the local people, and my various fellow hikers, were friendly.  I became fitter than I have ever been, was able to eat a fantastic amount of food, and generally spend four months doing a fair amount of stuff I enjoy.  It was certainly never boring!

Seemed fun at first.

I do think I made quite a few mistakes... not least, my idea that at 'only' three thousand kilometres, this would be a relatively easy long distance path was, I am pretty certain, completely wrong.  The New Zealand attitude to paths, as in, there is no need to construct them, seems to be quite unique, so, while one of the big American trails might have been longer, it would also have been easier.  Given this, I surely should have allowed more time to do the thing in, it would have been great not to have quite as many really long days, and to have more time to rest up and explore.  I definitely should have done at least some posting of resupply packages - in particular to the mountain resorts such as National Park and St. Arnaud.  And I should have brought four pairs of shoes with me from the UK!

Did I see a Kiwi?  I think so.

Other than shoes my equipment faired pretty well... so my tent pole broke many times, I kept repairing it and it was still going at the end.  Also fair play to the cheap, five year old Decathlon rucksack, got all the way, albeit with a few broken zips.  Also awesome was my Garmin GPS, which allowed me to walk pretty much the whole way without the weight of paper maps.  A bit of a shame that the GPX file from the official Te Araroa site was less than ideal, as indeed were the PDF maps and guide files, still I expect enterprising third parties to address that over the next few years.

OK, this was fun I have to say.

What of the route itself?  Well, if you've read all my blog entries, you'll have read some fairly detailed complaints about it.  After a month of reflection... well, I guess the whole 'we don't need a path' thing is just the local culture, you kind of have to accept it.  I have to say that the all round horridness of the bush sections, and the large amounts of road walking on North Island, would still lead me to advise people to skip that altogether.  South Island would make a nice three month walk, and sure, go to North Island, travel, do some tramping.  But I would not recommend doing the long path up there.  It will improve of course, new sections continue to open.  But sadly I doubt there will be much motion towards better paths, they will just put more boardwalk and steps in.  The cap-doffing attitude towards private landowners seems embedded in the culture as well, so a huge amount of what is surely great walking in NZ remains sadly out of bounds.

Final thoughts?  Well, this was a great thing to do, and I'm glad I did it.  Maybe one day I will come back and do South Island again... before that though, it is a big world out there, lots more to see.  Bring it on!

Run Timmy run!