This is going to be a long post, simply because there is a lot to tell. Over the past weeks I’ve started to doubt whether hiking Te Araroa was making me happy. While being in New Zealand makes me incredibly happy and hiking makes me happy too, I just wasn’t feeling happy in general. While I imagined that hiking the entire length of New Zealand was going to be what I wanted to do, it in fact turned to be quite the opposite.   The actual realization that doing what I was doing wasn’t what I had hoped it would be already hit me within the first few days of…

The first 100 of 3.000 kilometers to hike are done! As I’m writing this I’ve just been dropped off in Kaitaia, the last major town before Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand reachable for visitors. I’ve just finished walking the infamous 90 Mile Beach and wow, it was hardcore. However, it also was fun and I was happy just about most of the time. 90 Mile Beach is a killer, both mentally and physically, and it’s said that if you can do this, you can do the rest of the trail, too. Here’s how I experienced my first section of Te Araroa, from Cape Reinga to 90 Mile…

Hiking the Te Araroa Trail in New Zealand has been on my mind for about ten years now as ‘something that might be fun to do one day’. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember that New Zealand has been my favorite travel destination in the world since 2002 and I try to go there as often as possible. However, I never had the opportunity to take six months off before to actually do this. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and I turned 40 that same year, I suddenly realized “I’m going to do it!” Now that I’m still fit and financially able to put…