A painted stone left at Twilight campsite read 'Note to self: One step at a time' — which turned out to be the right attitude for what lay ahead. A trekker setting out on Te Araroa, New Zealand's 3,000km end-to-end walking trail, has just completed the second day: the first stretch of the famous 90 Mile Beach, the longest beach in the country.
The name overpromises. The beach is actually 88km long — early European settlers apparently measured it by how far a horse could travel in a day, and the soft sand slowed the horses enough to inflate the figure. Even at 88km, it's three full days of flat, sandy walking for Te Araroa hikers heading south from Cape Reinga, and it has a reputation for breaking newcomers. The writer met several fellow walkers at a backpackers in Kaitaia who needed rest days after attempting it — some quit the trail there entirely.
Day 2 itself was a 28km slog from Twilight campsite past the Te Paki sand dunes and down the sand. The first landmark, Te Paki Stream, comes about 4km in, and the day ends near Maunganui Bluff at a lumpy, spiky-grassed campsite with phone signal. Distances on the beach feel distorted: an island with a rock arch visible on the horizon at the start of the day turned out to be only the halfway point.
There's a useful gear lesson buried in the middle of the story. The walker developed a painful right hip from the start of the trail and feared a real injury, until tightening the pack's hipbelt made it worse and loosening it made the pain vanish completely — likely a trapped nerve. The takeaway for anyone carrying a heavy pack on a long trail: experiment with strap adjustments before assuming you're hurt. Other practical lessons from the day: sunburn on the backs of the hands is easy to overlook when applying sunscreen, and blisters can develop silently on soft sand.
What makes the beach walkable, the writer insists, is company. The group passed the hours with spotting games, chats with fishermen, and pacing each other — walking flat terrain fast burns energy you'll want later. There's also wildlife to look for: wild horses live in the forest alongside the beach, and one has even been ridden the length of New Zealand by its trainer.
For travellers, this is a window into one of the world's great long-distance trails at its most character-building stage. You don't need to walk all of Te Araroa — the Cape Reinga to Kaitaia section, including the beach, is doable as a standalone multi-day trip if you're fit and well-equipped, and the Kaitaia backpackers scene is full of people swapping exactly this kind of advice.
