The Pukatea Walk is a short botanical ramble that will take you no more than 30 minutes to complete.
Head north from Tōtaranui on the Coast Track. The walk leaves the Coast Track at the bottom of Anapai Hill and runs through a kānuka/gorse shrubland typical of local abandoned farmland.
Next it follows a curving boardwalk through a raupō swamp, then a dry ridge forest of beech trees, and on into magnificent pukatea forest with glades of tall nīkau palms and the occasional massive rātā tree and tall black mamaku treeferns.
The walk ends on a promise for the future. Under tall kānuka forest are dense thickets of pukatea, rimu and kahikatea, pointing to the time some decades ahead when traces of last century’s destruction will slowly fade from the landscape.
