 |
| The hi-vis vests were useful on the road sections |
Auckland Airport to Te Kuiti
Te Araroa officially opened a couple of years ago. It is a walking trail of 3000 km from
Cape Reinga, at the northern tip of the North Island, to Bluff, in the south of
the South Island. We walked the
first 600 km, from Cape Reinga to Auckland, before the official opening, so
this time, walking from Auckland to Te Kuiti, we found the route a little
better marked, and slightly better known.
We left Auckland on 5 March, and arrived in Te Kuiti on 17 March, having
spent a day with friends in Huntly, and a day and a half in Waitomo sitting out
the rain associated with a tropical cyclone.
 |
| Hinua Falls |
 |
| Repeater Shelter, Hinua Ranges |
 |
| Repeater campground toilet dwarfed by kauri tree |
 |
| Sunset at Repeater camp |
The terrain is varied: the route follows walkways, tramping
tracks, footpaths, stop banks and road margins. Consistently it takes in the high points along the way, so a
light pack is desirable to make the ups and downs a little easier. For this section through the Waikato we carried 5 days of
dried food for when we needed to camp away from facilities. However, the wilder sections were
relatively short, so we spent a number of nights in or near small towns where
we could buy real food.
 |
| Tree ferns, Hinua Ranges |
 |
| Misty morning in Hinua Regional Park |
 |
| Stream in Hinua Regional Park |
I was only able to carry my pocket camera, the Olympus XZ1,
and without the separate viewfinder that I accidentally left in the USA last
year, I found it difficult to frame good images in bright light. I carried the camera on the belt of my
pack, but even so, I found it more of a chore to take photographs on this kind
of trip, so I don’t have such a good set of images as I would like. As usual, my favourites are generally
those that I took either at the beginning or the end of the day when the light
was best. It also helped that I
had shed my pack by then. As my
blog is about nature photography, I’ve mainly selected photographs of natural
subjects.
 |
| Waikato River at Rangiriri, where we stayed the night in the pub |
 |
| Bindweed flower on a damp morning |
 |
| Sunrise from our camp, below Mt Pirongia |
