21 October 2026

Twilight Campsite to Maunganui Bluff Campsite 

30 km/17.5 mi 

The first night on trail is always rough for me. I don’t sleep super well, thrashing around and having to get up multiple times. But I know, from experience, that it will get better over time. It’s only the first morning. Eventually I wake up for real, lured by the promise of Mash making coffee—real espresso, in an aeropress! The thought is enough to entice me to pack up and head over to the shelter, where I have a bagel with peanut butter along with my delightful full-strength real coffee. People start heading off onto the trail at different times until it’s just Mash, me, and Hannah, from Perth. The three of us spend a good long time yapping until we realize we’re the last ones. Hannah heads off, then we follow a bit later.

The first couple of miles are lovely rolling hill again, a track through the dunes that whirls and winds up and around ridges and down. It’s early morning light and very pleasant. There’s dense tree cover here, those same small juniper looking trees from yesterday. 

We crest a hill and see Hannah, who is checking her email. Naturally, the promise of cell signal gets me to pull out my phone. I text some photos to my mom, post to Instagram, and then shake myself out of it and carry on. The three of us head down the hill together, and then it gets very steep before turning into a full-on staircase. How nice! I think at one point to ask Hannah if she knows what the trees are—she seems like someone who knows things. She tells me they’re tea trees! A whole forest of them. That’s why it smells so clean and sweet here.

At the bottom of the hill we turn right on the sand and left onto Ninety Mile Beach. There it is. The iconic stretch of flat sand and crashing waves that will be our home for the next three days at least. We walk with Hannah for a while and have a good chat. She’s a tour guide, working on small expedition style cruises. She’s been all over the world on these boats, from Antarctica to the Arctic, and so many places in between. That’s why she knows so many things.

At one point, Mash and I stop for a snack and Hannah pulls ahead for a bit, so it’s just the two of us for a while until lunch. We’re going at a pretty good clip. It’s completely flat, after all. There are dunes on the left, scattered with grasses, and the crashing ocean on the right. And this is exactly what it looks like all day. I’ve done short stretches of beach walking before, but nothing of this magnitude. I probably took less than ten photos all day walking because there wasn’t any variation, except for the occasional deceased, desiccated pufferfish and some particularly beautiful shells: glowing green, pearlescent silver. 

We try to hold out until midday to eat lunch, but I start flagging around 11:30, and a little after that we some of the folks from camp last night pulled over eating lunch. We decide to join them, and I unfold my foam pad and plop down on it with unconcealed delight. My feet are really starting to feel it, and I’m so keen to take my shoes and socks off. Having completed that task, I commence creating my wrap, the same as yesterday, but just as delicious. It feels too early to be thinking about what I want to eat in town, but here we are. I gleefully and readily return to the delight of calorie consumption on a long hike.

It’s odd to me how quiet people are so far. No one really talks at lunch—which is fine, but if this were the PCT, I would assume that something was very wrong if people were this quiet, even on the second day. I think back to that first night at Hauser Canyon and can’t help but compare. We had some good chats last night and this morning, but nothing like that kind of openness. Maybe it depends on the group, or maybe the extroversion is an American trait. Or maybe it will just take everyone some time to warm up.

We’re one of the last to leave lunch, and after that meal, rather than feeling restored from the break, I feel really wrecked. I’m alert and awake, but my body just hurts. Who knew walking on the beach could do that to you? But every so often I look at the waves, and listen to them, and remember to be present. I’m walking along a beach in Aotearoa. The water on my right and dunes on my left. At the very start, the far north of the north island, the entire hike ahead. Ah, what good fortune.

Mash and I spend the rest of the day being silly. I sing whatever songs pop in my head (today it’s “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”) and we play the word game and twenty questions. We find more dead pufferfish and watch more seagulls. We approach ever closer to camp, until we finally, finally get there. Up a sandy hill to another grassy flat patch. It’s gloriously sunny and, after we set up the tent, I lay on my sleeping pad and stretch before falling asleep right there on the ground. My legs get a little sunburnt, but between the constant sound of the waves, the sweet exhaustion, and the warmth of the sun, it’s worth it. 

I wake up after a little while and reorient myself to the world. I walk over to the little cooking hut, where Mash is hanging out. Sibylle, Izzy, and Thijs come over and we chat as we start dinner preparations. We compare our experiences with the beach. The consensus is that we all have sore feet, and none of us took that many photos today. But it doesn’t sound like there are too many blisters yet, so hopefully that holds for the rest of Ninety Mile.

Mash boils water and adds it to our freeze-dried meals while I go over to the shower block—yes, showers!—for a very cold rinse (or as much as I can stand of one, anyway). It leaves me feeling fresh. Not that I was that grody to start with, but still. Then back at the hut, the food is ready. Chicken tikka masala poshport meal is the choice of the evening. It’s an NZ brand and is, I’m sorry to say, nowhere near as good as Peak Refuel or Backpacker’s Pantry. But that’s okay. It’s warm, and good enough. 

This evening is another glowing delight. It’s breezy but sunny, and now that I’m not walking it is a perfect temperature for leggings and a Melly. And there is the omnipresent roar of the waves in the background. So far Te Araroa feels very different than other hikes I’ve done, but this is one heck of an epic start.