By Elliot

We went out and walked some trails that are not on TA. What did we get out of it?

For starters, we had amazing times together in huts. For three nights in a row, we were alone in huts of various sizes. It let us be ourselves unaffected by the people around us, which is something I definitely needed.

Planning our own trip, and not having it dictated by an external source was lovely, even if the trip we planned destroyed Ruth’s shoes, left me with scratched up legs and both of us with plenty of moments of dismay.

I found the muddy trail, lack of signage and general roughness of the trail a lot easier to swallow knowing that we chose a less popular trail, as opposed to TA which gets walked by thousands each year.

Being away from TA invigorated me. We didn’t meet anyone doing TA for the duration of this section. We could enjoy hiking without the weight of the 3000 kms and all the baggage that it comes with. We were not thinking about a next section, or trying to get anywhere. Just hiking, and cursing when our feet got stuck in knee deep mud.

I had a realization on this trip. I thought I didn’t like big groups of TAs. But actually, I don’t like any big insular groups. This I discovered when a tramping club stayed in the same hut as us, bringing their internal group dynamics and making the hut less friendly to everyone not in the group. I don’t like the way being in a group often makes people less considerate to others not in the group.

Anyway, we have a couple days in Christchurch before we fly back to Canada for the wedding. We probably won’t be blogging much for the next little while, but we will update when we are back in NZ! Thank you for reading, supporting, commenting, and being with us virtually on part one of our TA adventure.