Hiking New Zealand: Our Te Araroa Trail Honeymoon Adventure 🇳🇿

A Dream is formed

From the very beginning of our relationship, we knew one thing for sure:
If we ever got married, our honeymoon wouldn’t be spent lounging at a resort.

Instead, we dreamed of hiking the South Island of New Zealand, weaving our way through dramatic mountain landscapes, turquoise lakes, and wild terrain straight out of Lord of the Rings and Narnia. What better way to begin our life together than by igniting our adventurous hearts in the depths of God’s beautiful creation?

What’s the Te Araroa Trail?

Back in 2023, Jess spent six months in New Zealand attending a discipleship school to grow her Christian faith and leadership skills with CSALT (Christian Surfers Advanced Leadership Training)

This is when Jess first heard about the Te Araroa Trail.

“It sounded magical… hiking through stunning mountain landscapes, bright blue lakes, and exploring this beautiful country on foot. My adventurous spirit was peaked and the idea of hiking the more remote South Island rocketed straight to the top of my ‘dream adventures’ list.”

When we first started dating, there was a quiet question in both of our hearts — one we didn’t even know the other was asking:

“is this someone who would embark on wild adventures with me?”

We soon found a resounding “yes!” in each other and the ‘dream adventures’ list continued to grow! No matter how many ideas we added to that list – somehow hiking the South Island of the Te Araroa Trail always stayed at the top.

When we got engaged in August of 2025, there was little discussion over what we would do for our honeymoon. It was a no-brainer!

We are going to New Zealand, baby!

Our friends and family were happy for us, although somewhat curious how this idea would become reality.

“We just sort of went for it! We didn’t know how we would do all the logistics or even exactly how we would get the funds. We just knew that if God put this dream in our hearts and it was his will for us to go, it would happen!”

Timing was everything. Since New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere, summer runs from December through February, and many sections of the South Island are only passable during that window.

Since our family is super important to us and we wanted to spend Christmas with them, we opted to get married in October of 2025 for a beautiful fall wedding (I KNOW!!! Only a 3 month engagement!) and leave for our honeymoon mid January.

October 30th we sealed the deal! If you haven’t already, make sure to read more about Our Love Story!

Logistics & Trail Overview

Now it’s time to start planning our grand adventure!

The Te Araroa Trail spans the entire length of New Zealand from North to South. Between the 2 islands it is over 1,800 miles (more then 3000 km) long and weaves through high mountain passes, around volcanoes, across sweeping plains, alongside meandering rivers, and through bustling cities and rural towns.

And you won’t just be hiking (or as Kiwi’s call it – Tramping) through New Zealand. The trail combines sections of canoeing, biking, road walking, and long mountain passes. It’s a variety of terrain for sure! The image below shows the layout of the trail…

Because the North Island involves a significant amount of road and city walking, we decided to focus solely on the South Island section — the wild, remote part that originally captured our hearts.

The Distance & Challenges

We will be hiking approximately 818.35 miles (1317 km) to go from Ship Cove to Bluff. We plan to average around 15 miles per day and hope to complete the hike in about 2 months!

The Te Araroa Trial is a new trail comparatively. Construction began on the trail in 1994 and after a lot of hard work from volunteers, it was officially opened in December of 2011. Given that the trail is only 14 years old, in combination with the incredible amount of rain New Zealand receives each year, the trail is known for being rough and offering a challenge to even very experienced hikers.

In the South Island we will be facing some challenges. Of course, we can only predict the challenges we will face until we are right up against them, but one of the biggest challenges we foresee is making sure we are fully stocked with enough food for each section. The longest section between resupply stops is 9 days! This means a lot of extra weight in food to carry up those steep mountains for us! But we have a feeling the stunning landscapes and peaceful solitude of the wild will be worth the work!

The other huge hurdle (literally!) will be getting across some of the huge braided rivers in the South Island. These rivers take hours to cross and can easily flood within a few minutes. We will most likely have to find ways around them. We have brushed up on our river safety and equipped ourselves with a Garmin In-Reach to stay safe on trail.

A Fun Fact About New Zealand Wildlife

Some of the challenges we will NOT have to face are snakes, spiders that pose a danger to humans, and large land predators. Seriously — there are none in New Zealand. (Jess is extremely grateful for this ‘fun fact’!)

TRAVEL TO NZ

To put the distance into perspective: New Zealand is 18 hours ahead of our home in the Midwest. To our friends in the US, while you are having your dinner, we will likely be in the middle of a long mountain climb the following day!

We were definitely squealing when we finally booked our tickets to New Zealand! It’s actually happening!!!

We also applied for our visa and bought a trail pass. The Te Araroa Trail is funded by the TA Trust. To hike the trail, we became members of the trust through contributing to keep it beautiful for generations to come! It costs $809.46 USD per person hike the trail. This includes access to a lot of New Zealand’s back country huts along the trail that will serve as great resting points along the track. Most of the back country huts are equipped with bunks, a fully stocked fireplace, access to fresh water, and if you’re lucky, an outhouse! We plan to only take advantage of the huts when we run into inclement weather, but the majority of the time we look forward to freedom camping in our 2 person Nemo Tensor tent. The Te Araroa Trail allows camping along the trail (freedom camping) in most places.

We take off for New Zealand on January 13th and arrive in Auckland on January 15th, 2026. From Auckland we will take a 4 hour bus ride to visit some friends in Tauranga. These friends will serve as our safety check in as we traverse the trail. It will be fun to catch up and share plans for the upcoming trip!

Our flight path to NZ…

Our bus route to Tauranga…

Continuing South

After spending a couple of days with our friends, we plan to take another bus all the way to the southern tip of the North Island. We can’t wait to soak in the New Zealand country side and get a feel for the land that we will be walking on.

Our bus route across the North Island from Tauranga to Wellington…

Our trip will take us all the way to Wellington where we will catch up with some more friends and make our first food supply stop. We will be buying food for the next 7 days! Even though we pass through some other towns before officially starting the hike where we could buy food, Wellington will be by far our best option for affordability and variety.

Understanding the Culture

It is also important to us to stop in the Culture and History Museum of New Zealand.

Te Papa New Zealand Museum is a bicultural museum that will help us understand more about the Maori indigenous people who called New Zealand home for years before Europeans first settled here. Understanding and respecting the land we’ll be walking on is incredibly important to us.

The Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, meaning “Land of the Long White Cloud.”.

Arriving in the South Island

With our packs full of food and supplies, it’s time to hop on a ferry across the Cook Straight.

We arrive on the South Island in the town of Picton, but we aren’t at the start of our hike just yet. From Picton we have to hire a water taxi to take us all the way up to the starting point on the Northern tip of the South Island, Ship Cove. Ship Cove is really only accessible by flight or boat. From our arrival in New Zealand until we actually begin hiking the trail we are planning 7 days for catching up with friends, exploring, and getting our supplies in order.

Our water taxi route to Ship Cove…

From Ship Cove we will begin hiking the entire length of the South Island of New Zealand!

FINANCES & SPONSORS

This particular trail requires a good amount of logistics and finances – especially for two people! First there is the flights, buses, and taxis. We also need to eat and an occasional shower will be nice! All in, we’ve budgeted $10,000 USD for this trip (excluding gear). This includes all flights and permits to hike the trail! We want to share with you our journey along the way and if we are able to stay within our budget for this trip!

We are so grateful for our main Sponsor Berlin Gardens!!! They inspire people to “take life outdoors” and were generous in sponsoring $5,000 towards our trip! Our partnership with them is truly a blessing and has helped us be able to go on this trip!

We also had people give towards our trip as our wedding gift and Drone Deer Recovery donated a huge amount of $2,500!!!

Thank you!

We couldn’t do it without each person who supported and encouraged us!

We feel so blessed by the support from the community around us! Be sure to check out and support our sponsors!

The Deeper Meaning – Why we do what we do

Have you ever done something super challenging? Maybe it took all of your strength, energy, and concentration. In the end, were you glad you pushed through? Did it make you stronger?

In the heart of every human is the need for challenge. When we sit in comfort for too long, we can easily become complacent. With each passing day we grow older.

I suppose that’s why we are hiking this trail. Hiking is a lot like life. We take one step at a time. Each step counts. Yet when we look at the 818 miles ahead of us, it looks impossible. Though it looks huge, if we take one step at a time we will get to the end. If I’m stressed or worried about what is down the path, I’ll miss the beauty that is right in front of me.

One step at a time.

Thank you for joining us on the journey!