Hi I’m Emily, you will get to know me and my husband Glen pretty well over the next few months. So the Te Araroa Trail (TA for short)….Why on Earth would we attempt such a thing? This seems to be the main question I get asked when I mention this to anyone. Well, the answer is simply...Why not?
Glen and I have always set our sights on the next adventure, big or small, and strived to make it happen. We achieved a couple of epic trips overseas and, of course, our wedding in the last while, but last year we decided our next adventure should be right here in this beautiful country we live in. We have always hiked on and off over the 9.5 years of being together and living in New Zealand luckily means there is no shortage of places to go for a good walk. We did a bit of research and then added the 9 Great Walks of New Zealand to our bucket list and booked Waikaremoana for January this year. As we started collecting all the gear and upgrading what we already had, Glen mentioned that there was one Greatest Walk of them all….the Te Araroa trail. We flippantly decided right then and there to do it!
It mostly started as a joke, but then realising just how epic it would be and that it really was the ideal time for us to go, it became a reality. We don’t have any children or pets and are renting, so there was nothing holding us back. We completed the Waikaremoana Great Walk (more on that in a future post), which was our first taste of a multi-day hike. But we knew that if we could make it through that incredibly unmaintained track (in a cyclone I might add!), then we could possibly, actually, maybe complete the TA Trail.
