It was the end of October 2024. I officially defended my thesis titled “Searching for new physics using the ATLAS and FASER detectors” and became a doctor – Yay! Time to take a break and go on a big adventure! Right after defending, I went climbing with my friends in Leonidio, Greece, for ten days, but I didn’t plan anything for the trail. Te Araroa had been on my mind for the past six months, but I hadn’t done any preparation since then. It was the end of November, and I still hadn’t planned anything. I usually try not to stress about things, but this was the moment when I realized that time was ticking. If I wanted to do the trail this season, I’d better start planning because I should be standing in Bluff, at the beginning of the trail, in less than two months! So I started some actual planning.

The big planning… or not?

Speaking of physical preparation, I didn’t do anything special because I usually hike and run all year long, so fitness wasn’t my concern. And even if I weren’t perfectly fit, insufficient fitness wouldn’t stop me from starting this adventure. But there were a few crucial things that could. Namely, visas for New Zealand and flight tickets. I started to realize that I might be doing these things a bit late because getting a visa could take a few weeks, and it was just three weeks before Christmas, so I thought that things might take even longer.

There are several types of visas, and they can be requested through the website of the New Zealand Immigration Department. They even have a guide to help you pick the best visa option for you. The easiest to obtain are electronic visas for three months. They don’t cost much, but I knew that three months probably wouldn’t be enough to finish the trail, so I looked at other options.

The second option was a tourist visa for six months. These are more expensive, but the problem is that you need to have a ticket out of the country, or you need to provide proof that you have sufficient funds to buy the ticket later. This would have worked for me, but it could take several weeks to get, and I didn’t know what kind of documents they would require as proof of funds. If I had done this earlier, I’d be fine, but time wasn’t on my side. Christmas was approaching, which meant possible delays in communication.

The third option was a working holiday visa. These are more expensive, but I knew I should be able to get one since there’s a yearly quota per country, and the Czech Republic hadn’t filled its quota. You also don’t need a return ticket. So I applied for the working holiday visa and received it in my email in about five days, which was much faster than they claimed. Unfortunately, my name wasn’t written correctly – viva la “ř”! They specifically asked to write my name exactly as in my passport, which is Ondřej. However, the font they use in the visa form doesn’t support “ř”, so my name became “Ondej”. That could be a problem. I emailed the visa office and prepared to wait who knows how long, but I was surprised by how quickly they reacted. I had a new visa, this time with my name spelled as Ondrej, in just a few days.

Another reason for getting the working holiday visa, even though I didn’t plan to work, was that I didn’t need a return ticket and could hike the trail at my own pace, buying the return ticket only when I was approaching the end of the trail. Later I learned there’s a trick you can do with a cheaper tourist visa: you can buy a cheap flight to Australia, for example, and cancel it as soon as you pass border control. Then you can buy the real return ticket later when you know your exact plans.

Buying the flight tickets was straightforward. I didn’t have many options because I wanted to fly in the second half of January, so there weren’t many extra-cheap tickets like the ones you can find if you book far in advance; especially not around New Year. The plan was as follows: fly from Paris on January 22, 2024, go to Auckland, stay there for six days, and plan some logistics, namely resupply boxes for sections of the trail where it’s hard to buy food.

Even though resupply boxes aren’t strictly necessary, they can be useful in certain sections. There’s plenty of information online about this topic, so I won’t go into detail, but I decided to send two boxes to the trail – one to Arthur’s Pass Village and the other to St. Arnaud.

I also needed to buy some new gear that I didn’t have from previous adventures, but I’ll talk about my gear in the next post.

The trail is marked, but not everywhere. Some people might disagree, but I think it’s marked well in the sense that potentially tricky or confusing sections usually have good marking. Going without a map, however, would be very difficult. Though not impossible. I met a couple on the trail who decided to go completely offline without phones or maps, but after hearing their stories about crazy bushwhacking, I don’t think that’s the way to go. There will be plenty of bushwhacking even with navigation and maps!

There’s also one catch: all trails in New Zealand use the same marking, usually an orange triangle. So if two trails cross, you really need to know where you’re going, or you might end up following the wrong orange triangles. You wouldn’t be the first one to do some bonus miles, but it’s more convenient to avoid that.

The official route (which can slightly change every year due to closures or the opening of new trail sections) is marked in the official Te Araroa trail app, which is free. It includes trail notes and directions, but I preferred another app — FarOut. It offers guides for many long thru-hikes, including the famous PCT and others. The app itself is free, but the guides must be purchased. I think it’s a good investment. I met people hiking without FarOut, so it’s not necessary, but I found it super useful because it shows not only the trail but also water sources, shops, accommodations, and even user comments under each waypoint — providing up-to-date information about huts or water quality. Different waypoint types (shops, water, huts, etc.) have different colors, so it’s easy to see, for example, where the next resupply point is. That saves a lot of time because you can easily plan how long each food section will be.

I was also using my all-time favorite map app Mapy.cz (now Mapy.com). It’s free, without ads, allows offline maps, and supports offline route planning. My usual workflow was to create a .gpx track for the next trail section, send it to my Garmin watch (which supports navigation), and then use that for hiking. Using watch navigation is my ultimate hack. You need to charge the watch every day, but its battery capacity is about 1/8 of a phone’s. So if your power bank can charge your phone four times, it can charge your watch 32 times — meaning you can navigate for a whole month using only your watch, while saving your phone battery for emergencies or photos. I’ve used watch navigation on all my previous big adventures, and it works even if you only have the line and no map! I think watch navigation is one of the most underrated features of modern sports watches.

What else?

Unlike some famous long trails in America, there is no permit required for hiking Te Araroa. However, it’s useful to buy the trail pass, which allows you to stay in the huts. You can hike without it if you don’t plan to stay in huts, or you can buy individual hut tickets, but the trail pass is generally cheaper and easier and you don’t need to worry about tickets. There are only a few huts on the trail (mainly in Nelson Lakes, as far as I remember) where you still need to pay separately, but the trail pass gives a discount. You’ll also be asked to donate to the Te Araroa Trust to support trail maintenance, though that’s not mandatory.

Other useful resources

There are plenty of resources online, but some that I found particularly useful were:

  • Official Te Araroa website – the most reliable source of information, even though some details may not be there.
  • Te Araroa Facebook group – where you can ask questions and search previous posts, since you’re probably not the first to deal with a given issue. There’s also a dedicated group for each hiking season where you can connect with others hiking at the same time.
  • Trail Angels Facebook group – a very useful group I discovered thanks to another hiker toward the end of the trail. Trail Angels are people who help hikers, often offering a place to stay overnight for a small contribution (or for free, though a little tip, koha, is always appreciated). Their help is especially useful in the North Island, where it’s sometimes hard to wild camp.
  • TA NOBO guide – particularly useful if you’re hiking NOBO like me, since most resources are written for SOBO hikers and it’s a pain to read trail notes from bottom to top. This page also contains a lot of useful information.
  • WhatsApp group – when you start hiking, you can ask in the Facebook group or other hikers if you can be added to the WhatsApp group. I almost never used it, but it’s good to be there in case you need to ask something quickly.

If you’re interested in my gear list, continue reading the next post.