Lukas & Kim

“Why did you decide to walk Te Araroa northbound (NOBO)?” is a question that you get quite often when you have decided to walk the trail NOBO. But why is that? Well, we decided to dedicate a blog post to answering that question! If you're interested you can find the link in our bio to our blog, where you will find the blog post 😊

New Zealand Expenses One of the most common questions when going for a long-distance hike or going travelling is - How much does it cost? We have fiiiiinally put together all our expenses from our almost 6 months long trip for you! Keep in mind that these are for the two of us. Here are some of our biggest expense categories: New Zealand (during the entire trip) Accommodation 54,957 SEK SIM-cards 1,883 SEK VISA 5,958 SEK Flights 57,194 SEK Trains & buses 6,024 SEK Boats & ferries 7,098 SEK Rental car related costs 27,064 SEK Taxi/Uber/Shuttle 2,124 SEK Food 79,025 SEK All costs during our trip to New Zealand 349,880 SEK Te Araroa (only during Te Araroa) Accommodation 32,578 SEK Clothes & gear 51,695 SEK SIM-cards & Garmin Inreach 2,532 SEK Te Araroa fees & donation 13,678 SEK Flights 57,194 SEK Trains & buses 6,024 SEK Boats & ferries 7,098 SEK Taxi/Uber/Shuttle 2,124 SEK Food 55,127 SEK Total costs related to Te Araroa 265,834 SEK For the full list of ALL of our expenses, check out our Google Sheets document! Link in bio! :)

HOME SWEET HOME So what has been going on since the last update? Well, we settled back in at home in Sweden, and Lukas almost immediately started working again. Kim spent some time tying up some loose ends and preparing to move. Move? Why? Where? Well, back to Grövelsjön and the fjell! To spend the summer working there. It's been a few weeks now and it's been pretty good, we've made it work, again. Of course we would have loved to live together but sometimes you just can't get all the things you want in life - at least not at the same time. So here are some pictures from Lukanik (Lukas business), as well as from Grövelsjön - from some random day hikes and Elgåhogna, as well as from our hike up to the top of Sølen 1755 m.a.s.l. in Norway, the highest peak in the area around here.

TE ARAROA - IN NUMBERS 📝 The part that is most fun after every hike is to compile the statistics! Down below are a few. The rest, and the details, you can find on our blog 😊 Start date: 19 December 2024 End date: 23 April 2025 Total days from start to finish: 126 Zero days ON trail: 6 Zero days OFF trail (travelling with family): 7 Total days HIKING: 113 Total days with any kind of company during the day: 19 Total distance: 2,905.92 km Longest hiking day: 42.62 km Shortest hiking day: 5.86 km Avg. hiking day (incl. zeros): 23.06 km/day Avg. hiking day (excl. zeros): 25.72 km/day Total ascent: 77,863 m Regions passed while hiking: 11/15 Number of nights in tent: 59 (46.8 %) ⛺ Out of these, 24 were wild camp, 10 holiday park, 7 outside hut, 16 campsites, 2 trail angels. Other accommodations: Hostels, Holiday parks, Trail angels, DOC huts, AirBnBs, Motels, Hotels... Number of bars eaten: 438 (=3.5 bars per day!) Chocolate: 7,035 grams! 🍫 Beef Jerky & Biltong: 3,725 grams Bags of chips and Pringles tubes: 44 + 17 = 61 Longest stretch without seeing sheep: 18.5 days (for Lukas) & 7 days (for Kim) 🐑 Stung by wasps: 3 times (Kim) 🐝 Lukas' swims: 49 (of which 43 was on the South Island) Kim's swims: 12 Kim's falls/bad slips: 12 Lukas' falls: 2 Lukas' catholes: 2 (one per island) Kim's catholes: 0 Longest stretch without laundry, resupply and showeing: 8 days Bypasses/ferries (included in Te Araroa): 8 4 car rides - Lake Wakatipu, Rangitata River, Rakaia River, Marsden Point-Whangarei Heads 4 ferries/water taxis - Ship Cove-Picton, Picton-Wellington, Auckland-Devonport, Russell-Paihia ✨ http://lukasandkim.com/blog/ta-stats

New Zealand - Epilogue After finishing our Te Araroa hike/tramp on the 23 April 2025, we made our way back to Auckland. Hitching our way down, which actually went way smoother than we had anticipated. The same day as we reached Cape Reinga, we managed to hitchhike to Awanui, then Kaitaia. The day after we got a hitch just out of town, and then to Whangarei, and then Auckland. We stayed in Auckland for a couple of days, trying to regain some energy. Both of us were exhausted, even if we now weren’t hiking anymore. On the 28 April we took an Intercity bus to Tauranga. We stayed there for four nights, and tried to do some things while we were there, but the weather wasn’t exactly great. Rainy. We went for some walks and runs, found geocaches but mostly spent our time indoors binge-watching TV-series which wasn’t so bad either! 2 May we took another bus to Rotorua. We went here mainly for a big geocaching-event. A 25 Year Anniversary Block Party Event. Quite a big thing, especially within the New Zealand geocaching community. It was great fun, and we got to meet a lot of other geocachers and went for long walks around Rotorua. On 5 May we went back to Auckland again together with another geocacher. 6 May was our last full day in Auckland and guess what we spent the time doing, except for packing of course? Well, you guessed it right. We went geocaching 😉 7 May we flew out from Auckland, spent about 10 hours on the flight to Singapore which were exhausting. Only to eat and change flights and then jump on the last flight to Copenhagen. Now about 12 hours flight. From here we visited some friends and family along the way home. There will be some stops in Malmö, Alvesta, Linköping and Stockholm, before finally arriving back home again ❤️ A long journey has finally come to its end and now its time to slowly ease into “normal life” again. Work. Save money. Plan for the next thing. Whenever and whatever that may be 😊 ✨www.lukasandkim.com/blog/new-zealand-epilogue/

WE DID IT! 🥳 We finished our thruhike of New Zealand! 🌟 126 days 🌟 🌟 2906 km 🌟 *** Ahipara - Cape Reinga 106 km 21 Apr - 23 April (3 days) 90 Mile Beach! We were finally here, and it was a bit hard to believe. A place we'd thought about some now and then throughout the entire hike. And now we were here. We started the beach walk, excited to finally be here, but soon started feeling a bit tired. The views, the sounds... Nothing really changing. This beach was also not just long, the surface was really hard, much harder than the other beaches we'd walked on. So after walking barefoot for 20 km that day, we realised we'd have to wear shoes the rest of the way. We arrived at the first campsite in Hukatere in the twilight. There we met several nice people that we chatted with. Not much happened the day after. Everything was the same, same, same. To Bluff Campsite we arrived before dark. And now we had to make an important decision. The original plan had been to stay one more night before going to Cape Reinga, so we could arrive early. But now we changed our plan because of the weather, and decided to go all the way already tomorrow. Since it was a 12+ hour day, it meant we would have to go up in the middle of the night. So at 3 am, the alarm went off, and we got going. Today the views were actually a bit different, and the landscape was actually changing around us. We also walked on some trails today and walked up stairs, which was very needed for our stiff bodies. Walking up the final hill felt strange. But we were so ready for it all to be over. Just before 5:45 pm we reached the signpost and lighthouse. Just before the sunset that was hidden behind clouds. It was hard to take in. We had made it! We had finished our thruhike and Te Araroa.

Pataua South - Ahipara 265 km 11 Apr - 20 Apr (10 days) There was a lot that wasn't great this section. Our moods had been going up and down, and we had been arguing before, but now it really wasn't great. And neither was the trail. Due to whatever reasons, we had to road walk around certain sections, that apparently was supposed to be pretty nice, and these road bypasses were incredibly long and boring. Going more sideways than forward, so in a way everything felt really slow and tough, especially mentally. The rain kept coming and going and one day we just sat down to have a look at the forecast. It didn't look good. A storm, or according to some, a cyclone, was coming with 17 m/s winds and over 100 mm rain in 2 days. We decided to hunker down in Kerikeri and wait it out. It felt weird to stay in bed almost the entire day, but it was nice too. Lukas did laundry and we went to the cinema and resupplied. Then we decided to keep going. Ahead of us we had Puketi, Omahuta and Raetea Forest as we would traverse the country. Raetea is a famous mud forest that we'd heard about since we started our hike, and in Omahuta you walk several km in a river. None of this is reasonable to walk after so much heavy rain and wind, so what were we supposed to do? Well. More road walking. The tricky part though, was where to camp and where to get water. But soon we had a plan and set off. It rained on and off for the next 2 days as well. Sometimes it was just pouring down, especially just before we reached the campsites. It wasn't pleasant, but we pushed through. The third day since we left Kerikeri, we reached Kaitaia, the last town before Cape Reinga. We enjoyed some food and milkshakes, until we suddenly realised that no proper grocery stores were open because it was Easter! Luckily we found a dairy that was open, but we couldn't buy any of the things we had planned to buy, and were a bit sad about this. But we tried to do the best of the situation. Then we were off to Ahipara, on our very last road walk. Total days: 123 Total distance: 2800 km

South of Mangawhai - Pataua South 124 km 7 Apr - 10 Apr (4 days) This section started with 15 kms on a road. Normally you'd walk up over a hill through bush, but we were the opposite of excited to slide around in mud and arrive to our planned place to sleep several hours after dark, so we road walked. We stopped at a holiday park where we bought some snacks and rested to gain some energy before THE BEACH WALK! We were so happy to be on the beach with good weather. We walked barefoot in the sand and soaked it all in, but it was quickly over. After Mangawhai we didn't have so good weather, so we again decided to road walk instead of following the Te Araroa trail. It's not nice to hike in the rain on the road, but doing so through wet bush is always a lot worse. This evening we had an amazing AirBnB booked, a cute cabin, far away from any city, with rolling green hills around. Just what we needed. The next day we had a few km of road walk ahead of us before joining another beach. This time we followed the beach almost the entire day. But unfortunately, at the end of the beach, we needed to take a boat across the Whangarei Harbour. The regular boat operator wasn't available this day, nor the day after, so our only solution was to try to hitchhike around. We hitched to Whangarei, and then got picked up by some nearby trail angels, who had walked the trail earlier this year, and driven back to the trail. We were so thankful! That evening we had the most beautiful pink sunset with Beam Head in the background, and that's where we went the next day. It was an easy, yet tough walk up the 1203 steps to the top of Mt Lion. Later we enjoyed our very last beach walk on the West Coast, and our last beach walk on this hike before 90 Mile Beach. Now both of us had also beaten our previous records of longest hike (amount of days). So in a way, everything from now on was new. Total days: 113 Total distance: 2536 km