Te Paki Coastal Track, NZ

Te Paki Coastal Track is on the tip of the New Zealand’s north island. It starts from the Spirits Bay, goes by Cape Reinga and finishes at Te Paki stream. Cape Reinga is the starting point for Te Araroa, New Zealand’s longest trail, a thru-hike of New Zealand, so if you do the Te Paki, you’ve walked part of the TA.

All the DOC information state that this is an easy walk, but what they forgot to mention is that it's constant undulation. I found Te Paki to be more challenging to me than Milford Track. On top of that, I left my visor/cap in the car and missus had left her trail runners in Auckland (yes really), so she was going to walk the trail barefoot and in flip flops. I was also carrying our regular tent, Marmot Limelight 3p, which weighed a measly 3kg (Spoiler alert, too much).

Day 1: We had a taxi drop us off at Spirits Bay campsite. From there on, it was very sandy trail. Mozzies & sandflies were also plenty about. 9k to Pandora Bay, where we could've camped. In retrospect this is what we should've done. The first part of the day was unshaded temperature running in at +26 and we had to ration water. At Pandora Bay we had lunch, filled out our water bottles and continued to Tapotupotu Bay campsite.

The trail was constant undulation, up 300m, down and up again. It was also very steep at places to the extent that while sitting down, I wasn't able to put anything light on the ground or it would've rolled/slid off. We finally arrive at the campsite and since it was a bank holiday weekend, it was packed. We were lucky to get a place for our tent.

We set up the tent, I set up the mats while missus was boiling water for dehydrated meals. I started getting cramps and nothing would help. I always carry electrolytes with me while walking and this was no different. Despite rehydration and supplementing with electrolytes, I had multiple cramps at the same time. In the end I was afraid to move, as it'd trigger a cramp somewhere on my legs. I ended up lying on a fetal position under my quilt. We were both exhausted. Unfortunately the campsite was a bit loud with people drinking and playing music. I always carry ear plugs with me for occasions like this.

Day 2: We slept in. Had a leisurely breakfast, packed up our kit and got walking. The trail would be even steeper than on the day 1. Mrs wasn't dealing well with the heat. A heatwave from Australia had pushed the temperatures to +28. I never known a sun so hot & harsh as the one in NZ. Even Australia's sun has nothing on the cold, white, bright light the NZ sun can emit. The walk from Tapotupotu Bay was only suppose to take about 3h to Cape Reinga. We ended up taking 5h. While it was beautiful, it was also very hot.

There was very little shade anywhere, and if we stopped by the Manuka trees for some shade they were homes to hundreds of mozzies. Luckily the NZ mozzies are tiny and tame compared to any other ones I've come across. I wasn't too bothered about the mozzies, but the missus was suffering.

We were slowly plodding along until we got to the bay, where Missus went for a swim.

After that it was a long ascent to Cape Reinga where we had to call it off.

Were we both exhausted. I drank about 2l of water when we got to Cape Reinga and my cramps were so bad I just sat by the toilets in the shade. Missus went to have a look at the Lighthouse.

I managed to negotiate us a ride from a nice Park Ranger, who dropped us off to our car.

We had a mediocre lunch at petrol station/restaurant/motel before started the drive down to south. Since we had a extra day, we found a campsite in Paihia, stayed the night there and visited the 90 Mile Beach the following day before driving back to Auckland.

Here’s the video from our hike.