At Te Waiwai Bay, a wild stretch of sandy shore, bordered by dense forest and scattered with driftwood, stretches out to meet the ocean. As I walked over wave-washed boulders, the silhouette of Stewart Island loomed in the distance. I felt as though on the brink of the country - and in some ways, I was.
Aotearoa’s road network ends at its south west corner, at the edge of one of its largest wilderness areas. Fiordland National Park spans more than 1.2 million hectares of mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers, fiords and forest. Popular Great Walks like the Milford, the Kepler and the Routeburn lie in the region’s northern corner; the coastal south has the Hump Ridge.
This track is a 62km loop walked over three days and two nights. It…