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About Te Araroa

Te Araroa - The Long Pathway - is a continuous 3,000 km walking track from Cape Reinga to Bluff.

Te Araroa will provide the ultimate 120-day New Zealand through-tramp, but will provide also section tramps lasting anything from a few days to a week or more, and many attractive day- or overnight walks. It is a different kind of trail from the traditional back-country tramping tracks. Te Araroa connects settlements, townships and cities, and is best conceived as a corridor that encourages social and economic transactions en route – for marae stays and other cultural experiences, also food and accommodation. The track corridor will showcase a wide variety of New Zealand experiences - natural, cultural, and historic.

Te Araroa’s boundaries are the natural boundaries of New Zealand itself. It starts and is brought to a natural halt against the sea. En route it explores New Zealand’s tombolos, its volcanoes, its range and mountain uplift, its rivers, lakes and valleys. Successful long trails overseas generally have a geographic and geological unity. Te Araroa’s variety is underpinned by the mightiest geology of all – tectonic plate subduction. When walking New Zealand, you are walking also the Pacific Plate boundary or – at least sometimes – along the Rim of Fire.

The long trail concept in New Zealand has a venerable history. In 1975 just such a “scenic trail” based on the Pennine Way, was the founding idea of the NZ Walkways Commission, which carried the long-trail torch briefly, but found it too difficult. The Department of Conservation (DoC) put the same goal into its Walkways Policy of 1995. As part of that policy, DoC also proposed giving high priority to countryside tracks traversing private land. DoC did not have the budgets, or the co-operation of Regional Authorities (RAs) or Territorial Local Authorities (TLAs) to achieve either goal.

Te Araroa Trust (TAT) and its eight regional trusts have begun to do what the official bodies could not. RAs and TLAs the length of New Zealand have begun to engage with Te Araroa, and TAT is now a leading influence in their local and regional walking and cycling strategies. The New Zealand public is also a trail partner. For ten years our organisation has had a hard battle for funds, and our survival, and lately our flourishing, is due to the efforts of dozens of volunteers who have kept the dream alive, and advancing.

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