The sand dunes were like golden camel humps. They lined the edge of Ninety Mile Beach, all snuggled together sprouting hair-like tussock. But on the third day of the plod from Cape Reinga to Ahipara, the dunes were all beginning to look the same, bouncing into the sea haze to the south. Golden sand, magically mesmerising but sadly and mercilessly monotonous.
The camel humps were oblivious to the incoming tide as another wave lashed my legs. I hugged the dunes, vainly attempting to escape the salt water. I punched the sand with my walking pole. It’s just a beach. Since when should walking along a flat beach be so difficult?
At Cape Rēinga, just three days earlier, I was about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life – Te Araroa Trail.
Ninety Mile Beach was the initiation. Including the sands of Te Werahi Beach and Twilight Beach, this stretch to the village of Ahipara was 101km of flat beach walking. In my head this was the easy warm-up before the trail really got going. Before the muddy forests and the mountains. So, how hard could it be?
At the end of day one as I hobbled into Twilight Camp with wet sandy boots and a 17kg pack, I wondered if I’d underestimated beach walking. By the end of day two, I knew I had definitely underestimated it. Boots were rubbing and blisters were forming. My legs felt like electrocuted iron rods from pounding for 28km over the concrete-like wet sand. My shoulders and hips were bruised and swollen from the pack. I was downing Ibuprofen like Tic Tacs and singing Tina Turner’s ‘(Simply) The Best’ on repeat.
Now here I was, day three, another wave whipping at my legs, wet from the thighs down. Golden sand, ahead and behind. Kilometres of it. Stretching out as a bland nothingness, the end never any closer. Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. Same frothing waves, same sandy beach, same camel hump sand dunes.
Then a ‘pleasant’ change: a dead washed-up whale, its huge backbone supporting the bloated carcass, seagulls gobbling hungrily. Tourist buses zoomed along the beach at high speed. People inside waved at me. Anglers in their 4WDs. Two cyclists pedalled past. And in between it all, blue sea, blue sky and a dead expanse of beach as lonely and empty as it was raw and beautiful.
Tears pinched at my eyes when I saw the flag for Utea Park, where my bed was for the night. The end of day three was finally in sight. The host, Paul, met me. A cap on his head, t-shirt stretched over his stomach and beer in hand.
“You seem to be walking okay,” he said. “Most people when they arrive here are desperate.”
I assured him I was desperate – I was just hiding it well.
“Well, there’s one of these for you,” he said, raising his beer and taking a swig. “And a hot shower. Bet you need one of those after three days.”
The hot water was delicious, washing away three days of sweat and salt and sand. Afterwards I met up with Alon Shahar, an 18-year-old Israeli on his OE whom I had met the first night at Twilight Camp. He had been caught by the high tide and had decided to go inland. This involved walking through the forest, where he’d fallen in a bog; but he’d seen a wild horse. He could barely walk as he teetered into Utea Park but his smile shone like the sun on the sea.
Next day, most walkers carried on the 31km to Ahipara. I chose to take two days, stopping at the Waipapakauri Holiday Park before trudging into Ahipara on the fifth day. These days were a theme on repeat. Sea, sand and sky. Only this time with drizzle and mounting pain.
The beauty and mystique of the desolate beach began to taunt me. It looked flat, yet there was the slightest camber that pushed my hips out of alignment. Distant objects didn’t seem to get any closer. Or were they figments of my imagination, optical illusions? And all the while, the wind and waves howled; a constant noise that vibrated through my being until I became one and the same: as wild as the landscape around me.
Yet, despite the wet boots, the pain and relentless monotony, I was in a spell. Ninety Mile Beach had a beautiful rawness. It was elemental; something remote and powerful that made me feel alive. It was a feeling that lingered: here was something greater than me and I was just a humble observer. Then, at each day’s end, a feeling of accomplishment as I watched the horizon being smothered by the roiling sea. The beach had done its worst to me but I had prevailed.
Walking into Ahipara juddered me to the core. The village had begun as a series of dots, white against the hillside. Never getting closer. Then, suddenly, I was there, 101km now behind me. I was broken. As I hobbled towards the campsite, I passed a couple. “You’re almost there!” the young woman shouted.
People who have done Ninety Mile Beach as novice walkers say it breaks you down. It teaches you things. About yourself. About your kit. You arrive in Ahipara a different person. You grow up.
“I’m not really sure what I was expecting,” Shahar says now. “I knew walking the TA would be tough but I figured a walk on a beach was a nice way to start. But it’s not an experience I would care to repeat – I officially removed ‘likes long walks on the beach’ off all of my dating profiles.”
I asked him about blisters. “Blisters! Just so many blisters. Both mine and other hikers. I don’t think I’ve seen that many blisters in one place. I had to recover in Kaitaia for five or six days before I could get back on the trail.”
But not everyone lingers on the suffering. Lesley Scott, from the UK, who trekked across New Zealand several years ago, admitted she thought Ninety Mile Beach would be easier than it was but was unperturbed by the pain and blisters.
“I enjoyed the Ninety Mile Beach walk,” she says. “I love walking on the beach and I ended up walking barefoot a lot of the time. This was because of blisters but also because I usually walk along the beach this way. It was a long, hard walk which seemed never ending, but the scenery was stunning.”
She even said she would consider walking it again.
So too would Stephanie Booth, from Canada, the young woman who urged me on as I neared the campsite in Ahipara. She said reaching the village was an accomplishment she would never forget. “We would do it again but start at Spirit’s Bay instead of the Cape. It would add a couple of extra days but it would be worth it.”
I stood in the queue at the Kaitaia Post Office, a parcel of excess kit in my hand to post home. There were other TA walkers in line too, each with their own boxes of bits of kit they realised they were carrying unnecessarily. Would they walk Ninety Mile Beach again? I wondered. Sometimes the answer is only as long as the time it takes for the blisters to heal.
How to get to Ahipara in one piece
34 years of inspiring New Zealanders to explore the outdoors. Don’t miss out — subscribe today.
Questions? Contact us
