![]() Good thing Dudeck and Ubilla have yet to settle on its ends. Can you negotiate your way through private land in Spanish? Can you slow down and embrace local culture and astounding beauty without feeling the American compulsion to finish, let alone finish fast? Can you accept failure, the most common GPT outcome, as a variety of success? With its stunning diversity of terrain and dependence on diplomacy, the GPT might be my ultimate trail-the one that, when I’m ready to commit, could be my final trek. Sure, the Pan-American Highway and Chile’s Route of Parks can guide you deep into some of the least developed parts of the planet, but no journey questions and expands the philosophical underpinnings of hiking quite like this one does. Dreamed up by German engineer Jan Dudeck and his dauntless Chilean wife Meylin Ubilla over almost two decades, the GPT, despite its name, is less a trail than a confederation of cattle paths, tiny roads, and otherwise unmarked expanses that you must make your own way through. But what would it be like to really explore, to feel the frontier of modern adventure? For the next several years, the Greater Patagonian Trail should provide some answers. I often lament that much of my hiking life happens on established trails, following routes that can be navigated via maps on apps. Termini: Santiago, Chile (north), and Navarino Island, Chile (south) Greater Patagonian Trail, Chile and Argentina A group of arrieros, who transport goods and other pack animals, riding along the Greater Patagonian Trail in South America (Photo: Bethany Hughes) Thanks to flipped hemispheres, you’ll want to trek Rakiura-or tack it onto the Te Araroa-between October and March, when stateside hiking opportunities dwindle. And while I do love hiking in ankle-deep mud, officials work hard to curb the bog’s creep by packing down the trail. Enjoy three days of slow walking and reverie on isolated beaches, and choose from multiple huts (think Appalachian Trail shelters, but sturdy and clean) and campsites, ranging from $5 to $60 per night. Consider the Rakiura, which winds along near a series of bays and inlets (head out at night to look for kiwi feeding) and heads into forests of towering rimu. Kiwis take “tramping” seriously, devoting so many public resources to developing, protecting, and maintaining their routes that Americans can only be envious-or at least visit. Notice the dot of land just beneath the trail’s southern terminus? That’s Stewart Island, or Rakiura, home to an eponymous national park and perhaps the most enticing of New Zealand’s ten Great Walks: the Rakiura Track. Look at a map of Te Araroa, a 1,900-mile path that splits both the North and South Islands horizontally. Rakiura Track, New Zealand Walking the Rakiura Track tui bird, New Zealand (Photos: Scott Howes) I suppose this viral trek would do the trick, but I’m not sure if it’s the best or most efficient way to encounter the unexpected I crave, at least compared to these ten hikes I’m determined to do in my time. I don’t want to walk the longest continual path so much as the most impactful ones, the ones that show me nature and beauty, myself and others, the present and especially the past from some surprising vantage. But for me, hiking is a means to an end, never the end itself. ![]() It’s true that I love walking long distances, whether that means going from Mexico to Canada via the Pacific Crest Trail or traversing entire states like Florida and Arizona a month at a time. It is, allegedly, “the world’s longest continuous walk,” a fact I’ve never bothered to vet despite the dozens of friends who’ve sent it my way. ![]() ![]() Maybe you’ve seen it online, too-a Google Maps screenshot of the globe with a blue line that curves nearly 14,000 miles northward from Cape Town, South Africa to Magadan, Russia, arcing like a launched rocket through zones of extreme geopolitical turmoil. The map that has become a meme first began arriving in text messages, emails, and social media tags at least four years ago.
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