If you needed to lose weight, what approach would you choose? Go to the gym? Diet? Take medication? For this question, Waiheke man Matthew Smith’s solution was to hike over 1,500 kilometers across New Zealand.
But Matthew Smith said that none of these difficulties could stop him. “If I waited for everything to be perfect before I started, then maybe I’d never have begun this journey. My doctor suggested surgery, and I told him to wait until I got back from the hike.”
Currently, Matthew Smith’s average pace is 30 km per day, but he hopes to gradually reach 50 km per day during this 7-week trek. So far, Desert Rd has clearly been his biggest challenge—early that morning, he set out at 5:30 am and completed 63 km of hiking in one day.
“No matter how bad the blisters on my feet got, I just kept moving forward. I carried a locator beacon just in case.”
“A lot of people have advised me to drop the idea—they think it’s too dangerous, some worry my body can’t handle it, and others fear I might get hit by a truck or something.”
Before moving to Waiheke, Matthew Smith lived in Queenstown for 19 years.
Every day, Matthew Smith documents his daily journey on Facebook and answers five questions from the public each day.