I’d been walking since dawn to escape Auckland’s southern suburbs, and in the late afternoon the route markers finally led me into a reserve of regenerating bush. All day the countryside had teased me with glimpses of something else beyond two days of left and right turns through suburbia. Although I longed for the familiar sensation of a rough track beneath my boots, air free of carbon monoxide and forest shade, I’d taken it all in: the expansive view from the urban island of One Tree Hill, the fishers waiting hopefully with their lines in Manukau Harbour, the charming heritage homes and dilapidated state houses. Walking close beneath Auckland Airport’s flight path, I craned my neck, marvelling at how aircraft seemed to dawdle upwards yet remained airborne. 

The reserve was the day’s last leg before Clevedon, where I planned to sleep that night. I reached the summit of the range, above town, and climbed a lookout tower, hoping for a view back the way I’d come. After several weeks I was still getting used to how much ground I could cover in a day when I wasn’t confined to more rugged tramping tracks. 

I was snapped out of my daydream by someone else climbing the steps to the tower. A tall figure in running shorts and a singlet appeared, slightly breathless.

“Awesome view, eh,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah, so calm too.”

He looked me up and down, pack still on my back, camera bag on my chest and walking poles in my hand.  

“What are you up to? You look like you’re on a mission.”

“I’m walking the length of New Zealand from Cape Rēinga to Bluff. Following Te Araroa.” 

He gave me a look of disbelief. 

“Nah! Really? How long is that going to take?”

“I reckon about six months.”

I could see his interest pique. I went on to explain Te Araroa. “I’ve started pretty late in the season so I probably won’t finish until winter.”

He’d never heard of the trail or met anyone walking the length of New Zealand. The questions started to flow, with widening eyes, until suddenly he decided he’d heard enough and leaned forward. 

“Gis a hongi, bro!” he said as he grabbed my shoulders and pressed his nose and forehead to mine. Then, with a “Good luck, bro,” he turned and ran off down the track. 

I was raised a North Islander and in my late twenties moved to Te Waipounamu to be closer to the Southern Alps. As a kid, family holidays were spent exploring a nation that was terra incognita to my UK immigrant parents and me. I discovered the North Island from the back of the car, by tramping its ranges and volcanoes, swimming its beaches and exploring its towns, and absorbed the natural and cultural history. In my early twenties I cycled to all four capes of the North Island and all over the South Island. You could say I’d ‘seen the country’ – until I walked Te Araroa, that is. 

After my walk, people sometimes asked what I thought of the North Island, or how it compared with the south. One of the ways I explained the difference was to describe how, in the north, I’d carried my wallet in my shorts pocket for easy access, while in the south it was stashed in my backpack, sometimes for a week or more. Te Araroa’s South Island route mostly comprises a series of backcountry tramping trips separated by small towns and hitch-hikes to resupply; Te Ika-a-Māui is far more front country and rural adventure, and includes diverse forest reserves, two major cities, isolated beach walks, relatively frequent ice creams and curious cattle herds, along with some classic tramping routes. 

For me, the journey that transpired was to acknowledge New Zealand, not only through the lens of adulthood but via Te Araroa’s unique corridor through the landscape. Of course, some of the North Island experience isn’t world-class Insta-worthy scenery, but it has a different appeal – one that includes culture and society in a way that’s often more visible than in the South Island. I met many more people in the north and learned more about New Zealand as I walked through it. 

In the central North Island I detoured a short distance up a steep, rooty tramping track to the summit of Pureora, planning to camp there and photograph. The scrubby peak barely broke out of the bush, but it was a clear afternoon. As I neared the top I could see birds flitting about the forest canopy. I traced the expansive view across the volcanic plateau to Lake Taupō, beyond to Ruapehu’s commanding outline, and east across rumpled ranges to Taranaki’s perfect cone. I’d seen and experienced these places many times before but never from here. Pureora revealed a different perspective to the geography and the proximity of one place to another – joining the dots.

I thought for a moment about the devastating Hātepe eruption, from the Lake Taupō caldera, approximately 1800 years earlier. The eruption is classed as the most powerful on earth in the last 5000 years and generated a colossal pyroclastic flow that destroyed everything in its path, incinerating the forest and totally reshaping the land. I’d noticed evidence of this eruption’s deposits for days in the form of ignimbrite buttresses and scorched tree trunks, entrapped in layers of tephra and pumice, visible in the road cuts.

The following day the trail took me into the thick podocarp forest that covers the Hauhungaroa Range, where the unusual topography and eroding gullies of pumice reminded me that this lush ecosystem has recloaked the land only since the time of the eruption. Later, on the long road walk into Taumaranui, I was saddened by the contrast as the forest ended abruptly on the margin of farmland as far as I could see. 

It was well into autumn by the time I caught the early morning ferry to Picton. As we cleared Wellington’s heads I felt the deep, lazy swell of Cook Strait and went out on deck. I could see a dusting of snow on the Tararua Range, where I’d left a long trail of footprints in the mud just a few days before. Almost three months awaited me in the South Island, but already I felt like I was a more complete citizen of this country for the experience of travelling it mostly alone and on foot – a pace that allows you time to absorb the transitions and to reflect and compare. 

Te Araroa seemed to me a rite of passage, something everyone should do to better understand the land. And try to walk both islands, because if you open your eyes, they provide quite different lessons.

– Subscribers, get a 10% discount on Mark’s fully revised book, Te Araroa, walking New Zealand’s 3000km trail.